Literature, Film, and the Desirability of Life Extension

Convenors: (Faculty of History); (University of North Carolina); (Uehiro Oxford Institute); (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages)

Aging and death have always been central to our shared human identity and experience, yet recent advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology seem to challenge the inevitability of both—whether by epigenetic interventions or digitally preserving consciousness. Still, the ethical and existential questions these developments raise are not new.

Literature and film have long explored the meaning and significance of our shared mortality, sometimes imagining the usurpation of death itself. This artistic engagement can help inform contemporary debates about life extension through imaginative theorizing and challenging narratives that foreground aging and death. (And so the conference is not only concerned with literature and film that address immortality or the usurpation of death, but more broadly the applicability of stories that engage with the meaning, significance, and desirability of mortality and aging).

This conference draws on this rich tradition, inviting scholars of literature, film, and related fields, as well as practitioners, to discuss timely topics relating to life extension, including boredom and alienation, identity and memory, aging and altruism, narrative and selfhood, and the ways cultural memory binds us across generations.

Does immortality risk meaninglessness? Can a longer life deepen love—or diminish it? How could our sense of self change when death itself becomes optional? How might religious viewpoints and hopes for an afterlife shape answers to all the above? In reflecting on these questions, the conference will assess the desirability of significantly extended lifespans, as well as examine the broader question of the place of literature within contemporary ethical debates.

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