Event: Book and Research Discussion
swissnex Boston and Jelena Martinovic (UNIL-CHUV Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University) cordially invite you to a lecture on the fascinating history of Near-Death Experience, based on her forthcoming book “Mort Imminente – Genèse d’un phénomène scientifique & culturel”, to be released on June 12, 2017.
Sensations of well-being, out-of-body experiences, traveling through a dark tunnel, or an “Empyrean ascent”: representations related to near-death experiences have profoundly influenced collective conceptions of how we imagine the very last moments of existence. They suggest no more or less the possibility of an afterlife. Though recorded since Antiquity and observed in many different cultures across the world, studies on near-death experience have only recently been progressively integrated into Western medicine and psychology.
Following the work of the American psychiatrist Russell Noyes, Mort Imminente (Near-death) reveals the origin of this integration, tracking its emergence from the 1950s in the medical field in the United States.
A contemporary of palliative care, psychedelic therapy, thanatology and medical humanities, near-death experience studies have contributed dramatically to the development of the art of dying in the United States. Most of all, they suggested that a potentially traumatic near-death experience bears a powerful element for personal transformation.
The account of Albert Heim, an influential Swiss geologist and contemporary of painter Ferdinand Hodler, inspired Noyes to pursue this work. Heim published an essay in 1892, in which he describes his fall from the Säntis summit, focusing on the absence of fear and pain, sensations of well-being, and the seeming ability to travel back in time. Indeed the notoriety of this essay in the US in the 1970s and its reinterpretation by American NDE researchers caught Martinovic’s attention.
A panorama of a specific field of study and an epoch, Jelena Martinovic’s book unfolds a passionate historical inquiry, which puts its readers into the core activity and transformation of scientific research.
About the author:
Jelena Martinovic is UNIL-CHUV visiting postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Department of the History of Science. An associate member of the Institute of the History of Medicine and Public Health Lausanne, Jelena has previously held a position as Swiss National Science Foundation senior researcher and has taught at University of Lausanne, Geneva School of Art and Design, and the University of Art and Design Linz. She received her Ph.D. in the history of medicine at University of Lausanne and holds an MA both in sociology and visual arts. She has recently published Bold Climbers, an art book dealing with mountaineering, science, and aesthetics, and has collaborated in a team researching on “mind control” in art & design. Mort Imminente is her first monograph, published by MetisPresses, Geneva.
Image Credit: Cover Image: Ferdinand Hodler, Absturz IV (detail), 1894, Swiss Alpine Museum Berne.