{"id":235,"date":"2026-04-30T17:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artsci.utk.edu\/marcoinstitute\/?p=235"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:57:09","slug":"2019symposium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsci.utk.edu\/marco\/2019symposium\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 Marco Symposium: Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2019 Symposium: Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Friday & Saturday
April 5-6
Great Room, International House (1623 Melrose Ave.)
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Medieval<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, approaches to death and dying have become a subject of increasing concern both to scholars and the public. As medical advances in the western world have prolonged lifespans, fundamental questions of ethics and ontology emerge. Which bodies, which lives, will receive expensive interventions and who has the authority to make such decisions? When extending life via automated machinery, where does humanity end and robotics begin? And at the most basic level: what does it mean to die well, to make peace with one\u2019s transition from life to death, from community to invisibility? There is now a cottage industry of books, TEDtalks, and even \u201cdeath cafes,\u201d dedicated to fostering conversation about this subject that so many of us simply seek to avoid, fear to confront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2019 annual Marco symposium will convene a group of scholars of international stature to explore these questions from the perspective of deep religious history. Our premodern predecessors confronted processes of death and dying by elaborating striking rituals, poetry, funerary art, and institutions of communal caregiving. This symposium represents one of the nation\u2019s first gatherings of specialists in medieval studies to examine collectively the theme of death and dying from the inter-religious perspective of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They will present research on such topics as hospital foundations, bedside care, prayers for the dead, memorials, dissection, and reliquaries. Their approaches to the dead and the dying have much to inform our own culture about what it means to confront this ultimate reality that unites all humans, past and present, near and far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured Speakers:<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • Shahzad Bashir<\/strong>\u00a0(Brown Univ.)
    A Futural Death: Samarqand\u2019s Shah-i Zinda Necropolis in Narrative and Architecture\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Seeta Chaganti<\/strong>\u00a0(UC-Davis)
    \u201cDeath and Vestige: The Guild Chapel\u00a0Danse macabre<\/em>\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Adam Davis<\/strong>\u00a0(Denison Univ.)
    \u201cDeath, Salvation, and the Medieval Christian Charitable Imperative\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Susan Einbinder<\/strong>\u00a0(Univ. of Connecticut)
    \u201cPlague and Prayer: Hebrew Plague Liturgy from Medieval and Early Modern Italy\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Shirin Fozi<\/strong>\u00a0(Univ. of Pittsburg)
    \u201cThe \u2018Guest of the Body\u2019: Figure and Presence in Hildesheim Tomb Sculpture\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Richard McGregor<\/strong>\u00a0(Vanderbilt Univ.)
    \u201cThe Relic and Its Witness: Gaze and Display as Medieval Islamic Practice\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Stephennie Mulder<\/strong>\u00a0(UT-Austin)
    \u201cPeople of the Prophet\u2019s House: The Role of the \u2018Alid Shrines in Medieval Syria\u2019s Sacred Landscape\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Amy Ogden<\/strong>\u00a0(Univ. of Virginia)
    \u201cGrief as Essential to Happy Endings: Evidence from a Christian Hagiographic Anthology (ca. 1200)\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • David Shyovitz<\/strong>\u00a0(Northwestern Univ.)
    \u201c\u2018As One Dies, So Dies the Other\u2019: Human and Animal Eschatology in Medieval Jewish Culture\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • N\u00fckhet\u00a0Varl\u0131k<\/strong>\u00a0(Rutgers)
    \u201cMaking the Self: Death and Burial in Early Modern Ottoman Society\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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As medical advances in the western world have prolonged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n2019 Marco Symposium: Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - The Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/artsci.utk.edu\/marco\/2019symposium\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2019 Marco Symposium: Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - The Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"2019 Symposium: Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Friday & SaturdayApril 5-6Great Room, International House (1623 Melrose Ave.)The University of Tennessee, Knoxville In recent years, approaches to death and dying have become a subject of increasing concern both to scholars and the public. 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