AVACGIS Faculty Talk - Dr. Cortney Hughes Rinker (Anthropology)

Actively Dying: Death, Medical Discourse, and the Creation/Transformation of Muslim Identity During End-of-Life Care

Thursday, January 31, 2019 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM EST
Enterprise Hall, 318

Medical literature has shown that the phrase “actively dying” is frequently used by clinicians to describe patients who are nearing the end of life. Most often it is used to either refer to those who are within days or hours of death or it is used when particular signs and symptoms associated with death begin to occur, such as “the death rattle.” Even though there is not one standardized definition of “actively dying,” it usually references the beginning of an end. In her talk, Dr. Hughes-Rinker will seek to complicate the notion of the “actively dying” patient, and in particular to examine its relationship to religiosity and Muslim identity. Drawing on ethnographic research she conducted mainly in the Washington, D.C. metro area with primarily Sunni Muslim patients, families, and providers, she will use “actively dying” as a theoretical concept and analytical framework to explore how end-of-life care impacts their faith and religious identities. Using data from observations at a hospital and from semi-structured interviews, as well as from textual analysis and attendance at conferences and seminars, she will examine how the deteriorating body, the process of dying, the patient/provider encounter, and death informed the ways that patients, their loved ones, and even providers understood Islam and viewed themselves as Muslims. In conceptualizing the dying body as a site through which religiosity and Muslim identities are created, (trans)formed, or contested, she will argue that death and dying should be viewed as an opening or beginning and something that transcends the physical human body, rather than an end to the body itself.