The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 3

An urn with the conference title and dates

April 1, 2022

12:30PM - 2:30PM

Thompson Library 165 or via Zoom

Add to Calendar 2022-04-01 12:30:00 2022-04-01 14:30:00 The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 3 Session 3: 12:30-2:30pm, Thompson Library 165Osman Balkan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College“Death out of Place: The Transnational Afterlives of European Muslims” Abstract: How do European Muslims navigate end-of-life decisions in countries where they face systematic barriers to political inclusion and equal social standing? This talk explores the complex negotiations surrounding the death and burial of Muslim minorities in Germany. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Berlin and Istanbul, which included immersive participant-observation of the Islamic funeral industry, it demonstrates how burial decisions reflect divergent ideas about citizenship, belonging, and identity. While some Muslims are interred in local cemeteries, many more are repatriated to countries of origin to be laid to rest in ancestral soils. Through interviews with Muslim deathcare workers and community members, it theorizes the significance and symbolic value that such posthumous journeys carry in post-migratory settings, arguing that the Muslim corpse embodies a range of overlapping desires, experiences, and expectations connected to histories of migration and return, as well as attitudes toward death and beliefs about the afterlife. Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, Assistant Professor Religious Studies, Stanford University“Conjuring Death: Black Women and Retribution in the Era of Slavery” Abstract: The use of excessive force, acts of violence, and the threat of death to keep millions of people in bondage was an integral feature of enslavement in the Americas. Consequently, enslaved people grappled with the imminence of death from early ages to the end of their lives. For enslaved women, the threat of death was compounded by their roles as the primary caretakers of enslaved children and the gendered responsibility for the biological and social reproduction of enslaved humanity. This paradox of reproducing new lives while living under the constant specter of death produced orientations and rites that regarded physical demise as an instrument of intimidation and retribution. Thus, acts of retributive justice became a part of bondwomen’s religious repertoires, demonstrating how women used the collection of ritual acts known as “conjure” to gain some degree of control over their bodies, the lives of their children, and rites in their communities. Under what circumstances did bondwomen use conjure to hasten death for others? Moreover, what do conjuring practices that result in or hasten death tell us about enslaved peoples understandings of death generally, and bondwomen’s in particular. James Padilioni, Assistant Professor Religion, Swarthmore’When the Consciousness we Know as Life Ceases’: Zora Neale Hurston’s Hoodoo Multiverse Abstract: This presentation looks at Zora Neale Hurston's multiversal conception of the afterlife, and relates her cosmogony with her studies of a Hoodoo-Vodou cosmos which features a pantheon of ancestors, spirit guides, saints, angels, and other mysteries / miste as vibrant and vital -- however incorporeal -- members of the Black community. In a Hoodoo cosmos, “dying well” is not a one-time metabolic disruption occurring only upon one’s deathbed, but may involve multiple cycles of interdependent afterlife across an ecology of material forms in which the living members of the community must invoke their ancestral dead, elevate them, and give them light in exchange for guidance, wisdom, and the potential of intergenerational healing. 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 OSU ASC Drupal 8 ascwebservices@osu.edu America/New_York public

2022-04-01 12:30:00 2022-04-01 14:30:00 The End of Life and What Comes Next: Session 3 Session 3: 12:30-2:30pm, Thompson Library 165Osman Balkan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College“Death out of Place: The Transnational Afterlives of European Muslims” Abstract: How do European Muslims navigate end-of-life decisions in countries where they face systematic barriers to political inclusion and equal social standing? This talk explores the complex negotiations surrounding the death and burial of Muslim minorities in Germany. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Berlin and Istanbul, which included immersive participant-observation of the Islamic funeral industry, it demonstrates how burial decisions reflect divergent ideas about citizenship, belonging, and identity. While some Muslims are interred in local cemeteries, many more are repatriated to countries of origin to be laid to rest in ancestral soils. Through interviews with Muslim deathcare workers and community members, it theorizes the significance and symbolic value that such posthumous journeys carry in post-migratory settings, arguing that the Muslim corpse embodies a range of overlapping desires, experiences, and expectations connected to histories of migration and return, as well as attitudes toward death and beliefs about the afterlife. Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, Assistant Professor Religious Studies, Stanford University“Conjuring Death: Black Women and Retribution in the Era of Slavery” Abstract: The use of excessive force, acts of violence, and the threat of death to keep millions of people in bondage was an integral feature of enslavement in the Americas. Consequently, enslaved people grappled with the imminence of death from early ages to the end of their lives. For enslaved women, the threat of death was compounded by their roles as the primary caretakers of enslaved children and the gendered responsibility for the biological and social reproduction of enslaved humanity. This paradox of reproducing new lives while living under the constant specter of death produced orientations and rites that regarded physical demise as an instrument of intimidation and retribution. Thus, acts of retributive justice became a part of bondwomen’s religious repertoires, demonstrating how women used the collection of ritual acts known as “conjure” to gain some degree of control over their bodies, the lives of their children, and rites in their communities. Under what circumstances did bondwomen use conjure to hasten death for others? Moreover, what do conjuring practices that result in or hasten death tell us about enslaved peoples understandings of death generally, and bondwomen’s in particular. James Padilioni, Assistant Professor Religion, Swarthmore’When the Consciousness we Know as Life Ceases’: Zora Neale Hurston’s Hoodoo Multiverse Abstract: This presentation looks at Zora Neale Hurston's multiversal conception of the afterlife, and relates her cosmogony with her studies of a Hoodoo-Vodou cosmos which features a pantheon of ancestors, spirit guides, saints, angels, and other mysteries / miste as vibrant and vital -- however incorporeal -- members of the Black community. In a Hoodoo cosmos, “dying well” is not a one-time metabolic disruption occurring only upon one’s deathbed, but may involve multiple cycles of interdependent afterlife across an ecology of material forms in which the living members of the community must invoke their ancestral dead, elevate them, and give them light in exchange for guidance, wisdom, and the potential of intergenerational healing. 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

Session 3: 12:30-2:30pm, Thompson Library 165

Osman Balkan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College

“Death out of Place: The Transnational Afterlives of European Muslims”

Abstract: How do European Muslims navigate end-of-life decisions in countries where they face systematic barriers to political inclusion and equal social standing? This talk explores the complex negotiations surrounding the death and burial of Muslim minorities in Germany. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Berlin and Istanbul, which included immersive participant-observation of the Islamic funeral industry, it demonstrates how burial decisions reflect divergent ideas about citizenship, belonging, and identity. While some Muslims are interred in local cemeteries, many more are repatriated to countries of origin to be laid to rest in ancestral soils. Through interviews with Muslim deathcare workers and community members, it theorizes the significance and symbolic value that such posthumous journeys carry in post-migratory settings, arguing that the Muslim corpse embodies a range of overlapping desires, experiences, and expectations connected to histories of migration and return, as well as attitudes toward death and beliefs about the afterlife.

Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, Assistant Professor Religious Studies, Stanford University

“Conjuring Death: Black Women and Retribution in the Era of Slavery”

Abstract: The use of excessive force, acts of violence, and the threat of death to keep millions of people in bondage was an integral feature of enslavement in the Americas. Consequently, enslaved people grappled with the imminence of death from early ages to the end of their lives. For enslaved women, the threat of death was compounded by their roles as the primary caretakers of enslaved children and the gendered responsibility for the biological and social reproduction of enslaved humanity. This paradox of reproducing new lives while living under the constant specter of death produced orientations and rites that regarded physical demise as an instrument of intimidation and retribution. Thus, acts of retributive justice became a part of bondwomen’s religious repertoires, demonstrating how women used the collection of ritual acts known as “conjure” to gain some degree of control over their bodies, the lives of their children, and rites in their communities. Under what circumstances did bondwomen use conjure to hasten death for others? Moreover, what do conjuring practices that result in or hasten death tell us about enslaved peoples understandings of death generally, and bondwomen’s in particular.

James Padilioni, Assistant Professor Religion, Swarthmore

’When the Consciousness we Know as Life Ceases’: Zora Neale Hurston’s Hoodoo Multiverse

Abstract: This presentation looks at Zora Neale Hurston's multiversal conception of the afterlife, and relates her cosmogony with her studies of a Hoodoo-Vodou cosmos which features a pantheon of ancestors, spirit guides, saints, angels, and other mysteries / miste as vibrant and vital -- however incorporeal -- members of the Black community. In a Hoodoo cosmos, “dying well” is not a one-time metabolic disruption occurring only upon one’s deathbed, but may involve multiple cycles of interdependent afterlife across an ecology of material forms in which the living members of the community must invoke their ancestral dead, elevate them, and give them light in exchange for guidance, wisdom, and the potential of intergenerational healing.

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.