REGISTER BELOW
Conversation | Q&A | Wine & Cheese Reception
This event is primarily intended for current University of Chicago students, faculty, and staff. It is open to the general public. For any questions, please contact William Hurley at whurley@lumenchristi.org.
A new economy of “grief-tech” has arisen to confront the old problem of death. Changing social norms and advances in artificial intelligence have made it possible to ask, “Can we disrupt death?” Are grief-bots and simulated grandpas the solution to the anxieties of the human condition?
Throughout history, communities of great cultural and religious variety have provided rituals and traditions to deal with death and guide people through the critical process of grieving, memorializing the departed, and aiding the dead in the afterlife. In our time, such inherited practices and beliefs have declined, along with the communities that sustained them.
This symposium will explore technology and our changed circumstances, and will ask what disrupting conceptions of death through technology might mean for vital aspects of human self-understanding, mourning, care relationships, and the social order in which we are born, live, and pass away.
This symposium celebrates the publication of a special issue of Social Research, Disrupting Death. Copies will be available for sale at the event for $15 each.
Schedule
- 5:30 – 5:40 p.m. Symposium opens with framing remarks by Cassandra Sever
- 5:40 – 5:45 p.m. Dr. Sever asks an opening question
- 5:45 – 6:30 p.m. Conversation and Discussion
- 6:30 – 7:15 p.m. Audience Q&A
- 7:15 – 7:45 p.m. End / Wine & Cheese Reception for Audience
This event is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Divinity School
This project is made possible through the support of In Lumine Tuo: Expanding and Sustaining the Catholic Intellectual Tradition Nationwide (grant #63614) from the John Templeton Foundation and the generous support of our donors.
