From the middle of the 18th century, the understanding and the attitude to death and the dead changed considerably. Changing perceptions of hygiene, new medical knowledge, and a decreased mortality rate inspired a renewed interest in death and cadavers arose. This international interdisciplinary workshop will address this renewed interest and focus on the demand for corpses, their transfer, exhumation, and public display by (political and religious) institutions and communities. These occurrences often triggered celebrations, movements, or social unrest, imbuing deceased bodies with religious and political significance. Particular attention will be given to Roman Catholicism over the centuries between the 1700s and 2000s because of the high number of requests for dead bodies of saints and beatified, the intense debate surrounding corpses, and controversies over death during culture wars.
The workshop primarily explores the Catholic instances of claiming of bodies, the practices related to their appropriation, and their political and religious uses. The aim is to significantly contribute to the cultural history of death and the material history of Catholicism in the Contemporary Age. A long-term perspective and a multidisciplinary approach make it possible to welcome papers that touch on this topic from other points of view as well:
- Mortuary practices and their evolution in the Contemporary Age
- Comparative perspectives on the request for dead bodies in different contexts
- Material Culture related to death from a global perspective
- Interactions between religious, political, and societal forces regarding dead bodies
Proposal and Deadline
Each proposal must consist of two parts: the abstract of the paper (max 2000 characters spaces included) and the profile of the speaker (max 2000 characters spaces included): CV, current position, and any publications on the topic. The two parts must be combined in a single Word or PDF file. Applications must be submitted by 1 April 2024 by sending an email to: andrea.pezzini@unibe.ch. Accepted papers will be presented during the conference, with the possibility of publication.
