CFP: Pedagogy in the face of Death 26-27 February 2015 (Valladolid, Spain)

Pedagogy in the face of Death.
Reflections and interpretations in historical and philosophical perspective
Conference in History of Education

26-27 February 2015 – Valladolid, Spain
Antonella Cagnolati & José Luis Hernández Huerta (Dirs.)

Call for Papers
Admitted languages: spanish, italian, english, portuguese

Contemporary society has eliminated death from emotional landscape by introducing a taboo tending to hide this inescapable reality, the end of the life that awaits all. In past eras - from Antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century - death was presented with a twofold appearance, both social and individual. As a social phenomenon because rites, beliefs, superstitions populated the collective imagination by creating myths, folklore and popular narratives, and individual
because the transition towards death was always about a personal event, a process of the single man, completely alone, facing the mystery of his tragic end.
At the end of the Middle Ages was developed, adopting the philosophy of Seneca, the concept of memento mori, or the need to prepare for the final journey throughout the earthly life: a lot of manuals, pamphlets, booklets were published in which are reflected the novissima (a latin word meaning death, judgment, heaven and hell) and the most appropriate behaviors in life to avoid the despair and hopelessness, unmistakable signs of a soul who has not repented and was not prepared for death.
This reorientation involves the education as a practice for everyday life, for directing, guiding and advising the man in order to prepare his departure: the same philosophy of education develops the ethics of death, seen as the time when at stake is the eternal life. In the Twentieth century genocides have developed a different perception of death as physical and psychological annihilation, while the technology and medical science are pushing themselves to the extreme and weak boundary to really understand when life ends and if it is possible to speak of life when the mind is no longer present and vigilant. The manipulation of science is attacking this last bastion of morality, fitting in with the legal and emotional issues that are difficult to solve.
The Conference aims to begin reflecting on some issues, such as:

• the dynamics of ethical issues related to the «good death» in the past and the need for a «preparation», both in secular and religious sense in the course of life;
• in which degree the spectacle of death makes it «normal» in terms of the media, but not an ethical-emotional issue;
• the role of Pedagogy in its philosophical, anthropological and educational aspects, in front of the collective death, either caused by wars, attacks, various forms of repression, such as the concentration camps, or caused by natural disasters and tragedies of significant dimension;
• the idea of educating human beings to mourning, starting from childhood and continuing into adulthood;
• the problem of ipertechnologization of death in the modern and postmodern world;
• the strategies to deconstruct the taboo of death, whose separation from the world of the living makes it a topos:
• the ways in which Pedagogy, understood as an idea derived from Humanities, is facing its own extinction, gradually supplanted by the technologies of education.

The purpose of the Conference is also to contribute to the debate on scientific communication in the field of the History of Education and on its consequences that have a significant fallout on the forms and ways to build the discipline, as well as on the possibilities technological advancement could offer to the historians of education. We also like to review critically the prevailing model of management and quality assessment of scientific journals, as well as exploring alternatives. To these issues will be dedicated the Workshop on scientific journals dedicated to the History of Education.

Download here the  programme.