The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 2

An urn with the conference title and dates
March 31, 2022
2:00PM - 3:30PM
Thompson Library 165 or via Zoom

Date Range
2022-03-31 14:00:00 2022-03-31 15:30:00 The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 2 Courtney Campbell, Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture, Oregon State University“Dying Well and the Ethics of Physician-Assisted Death” Abstract: Contemporary scholarship on the end-of-life portrays American culture as permeated with a plague of bad dying.  The features of this plague, displayed in sharp relief in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, include the institutionalization, chronicity, professionalization, and medicalization of the dying process.  This presentation highlights four alternative ethical paths that seek to revivify an expectation and experience of dying well at life’s end, including the lifespan ethic, restoring the art of dying, the philosophy of hospice care, and legalization of physician-assisted death. Kathleen Garces-Foley, Professor of Religious Studies, Marymount University“In Search of a Better Death: End-of-Life Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century” Abstract: Despite the benefits of hospice care, there is a great deal of confusion, fear, loneliness, and exhaustion associated with dying, and caring for the dying, in the United States. A new cadre of entrepreneurial deathworkers offers a better way of dying. They call themselves death doulas, end-of-life midwives, vigilers, and death companions, among other names, and many frame their work as “emotional and spiritual care.” This talk investigates the efforts of death doulas to create a sacred way of dying outside traditional religious boundaries and hospice chaplaincy, while also trying to make a living wage in the gig economy.  For event updates, please continue to monitor this page.All events sponsored by the CSR are free and open to the public.The Zoom livestream of this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.Effective 08/02/2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Fully vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors. Thompson Library 165 or via Zoom America/New_York public

Courtney Campbell, Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture, Oregon State University

“Dying Well and the Ethics of Physician-Assisted Death”

Campbell headshot

Abstract: Contemporary scholarship on the end-of-life portrays American culture as permeated with a plague of bad dying.  The features of this plague, displayed in sharp relief in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, include the institutionalization, chronicity, professionalization, and medicalization of the dying process.  This presentation highlights four alternative ethical paths that seek to revivify an expectation and experience of dying well at life’s end, including the lifespan ethic, restoring the art of dying, the philosophy of hospice care, and legalization of physician-assisted death. 

Kathleen Garces-Foley, Professor of Religious Studies, Marymount University

“In Search of a Better Death: End-of-Life Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century”

Garces-Foley headshot

Abstract: Despite the benefits of hospice care, there is a great deal of confusion, fear, loneliness, and exhaustion associated with dying, and caring for the dying, in the United States. A new cadre of entrepreneurial deathworkers offers a better way of dying. They call themselves death doulas, end-of-life midwives, vigilers, and death companions, among other names, and many frame their work as “emotional and spiritual care.” This talk investigates the efforts of death doulas to create a sacred way of dying outside traditional religious boundaries and hospice chaplaincy, while also trying to make a living wage in the gig economy.  

For event updates, please continue to monitor this page.

All events sponsored by the CSR are free and open to the public.

The Zoom livestream of this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Effective 08/02/2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Fully vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors.