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MAIS 662: Mourning and Trauma: Theoretical and Historical Debates (Rev. 3) Report a Broken Link

Main Textbooks for the Course

Lengelle, R. (2021). Writing the self in bereavement: A story of love, spousal loss, and resilience. Routledge.
Stillion, J. M., & Attig, T. (Eds.). (2014). Death, dying, and bereavement: Contemporary perspectives, institutions, and practices. Springer Publishing Company.

Weeks 1 & 2: Introductions and an Examination of the History of Grief Research and Theory

Required Readings
Neimeyer, R. A. (2014). The changing face of grief: Contemporary directions in theory, research, and practice. Progress in Palliative Care, 22(3), 125–130.
Neimeyer, R. A., & Cacciatore, J. (2016). Towards a developmental theory of grief. In R. A. Neimeyer (Ed.), Techniques of grief therapy: Assessment and intervention (pp. 3–13). Routledge.

Week 3: Cultural Perspectives

Cacciatore, J., & DeFrain, J. (Eds.). (2015). The world of bereavement: Cultural perspectives on death in families. Springer.
Sharpe, C. (2016). The wake. In In the wake: On Blackness and being (pp. 1–24). Duke University Press.
Bordere, T. C. (2020). Suffocated grief, resilience and survival among African American families. In M. H. Jacobsen & A. Petersen (Eds.), Exploring grief: Towards a sociology of sorrow. (pp. 188–204). Routledge.
Bordere, T. C., & Larsen, J. A. (2018). Grief and loss among First Nations and African American youth. In C. Arnold (Ed.), Understanding child and adolescent grief: Supporting loss and facilitating growth (pp. 135–146). Routledge.
Walter, T. (2012). Why different countries manage death differently: A comparative analysis of modern urban societies. The British Journal of Sociology, 63(1), 123–145.
O’Neill, L., Fraser, T., Kitchenham, A., & McDonald, V. (2018). Hidden burdens: A review of intergenerational, historical and complex trauma, implications for Indigenous families. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 11(2), 173–186.

Week 4: Trauma and Adversity in Mourning—Routes and Barriers to Meaning-Making

Maté, G. (2012). Addiction: Childhood trauma, stress and the biology of addiction. Journal of Restorative Medicine, 1(1), 56–63.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). Prologue. In The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (pp. 1–4). Penguin Books.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). Lessons from Vietnam veterans. In The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (pp. 7–21). Penguin Books.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). Losing your body, losing your self. In The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (pp. 87–102). Penguin Books.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). Developmental trauma: The hidden epidemic. In The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (pp. 149–168). Penguin Books.
Den Elzen, K. (2019). Finding happiness and wellbeing in the face of extreme adversity. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 47(2), 143–156.
Steffen, M. E. (2019). Implicational meaning (re)creation in bereavement as a lifeworld dialogue: An existential–constructivist perspective. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 32(2), 126–137.
Bellamy, S., & Hardy, C. (2015, October). Post-traumatic stress disorder in Aboriginal people in Canada: Review of risk factors, the current state of knowledge and directions for further research. National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health.
Muscat, S. A., Wright, G. D., Bergeron, K., Morin, K. W., Crouch, C. R., & Hartelius, G. (2021). Ketamine-assisted and culturally attuned trauma informed psychotherapy as adjunct to traditional Indigenous healing: Effecting cultural collaboration in Canadian mental health care. Behavioral Sciences, 11(9), 118.

Week 5: Writing the Self in Bereavement and the Autoethnographic Voice

Adams, T. E., Ellis, C., & Jones, S. H. (2017). Autoethnography. In J. Matthes, C. Davis & R. F. Potter (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of communication research methods (pp. 1–11). Wiley-Blackwell.

Week 6: Unfinished Business, Taboos, and Identity Maintenance in Grief and Mourning

Holland, J. M., Klingspon, K. L., Lichtenthal, W. G., & Neimeyer, R. A. (2020). The Unfinished Business in Bereavement Scale (UBBS): Development and psychometric evaluation. Death Studies, 44(2), 65–77.
Holland, J. M., Plant, C. P., Klingspon, K. L., & Neimeyer, R. A. (2020). Bereavement-related regrets and unfinished business with the deceased. Death Studies, 44(1), 42–47.
Klingspon, K. L., Holland, J. M., Neimeyer, R. A., & Lichtenthal, W. G. (2015). Unfinished business in bereavement. Death Studies, 39(7), 387–398.

Weeks 9–12: Group Work on Grief, Mourning, and/or Trauma

Topic 1: Loss and Gender Perspectives—What Are Intuitive and Instrumental Grievers?
Martin, T. L., Doka, K. J., & Martin, T. R. (2000). Introduction and plan of the book. In Men don’t cry—women do: Transcending gender stereotypes of grief (pp. 1–7). Psychology Press.
Golden, T. (2020). Men and grief. In J. D. Morgan (Ed.), Readings in thanatology (pp. 339–345). Routledge.
Topic 2: Disenfranchised Grief—Socially Unrecognized Grief
Thompson, N., & Doka, K. J. (2017). Disenfranchised grief. In N. Thompson & G. R. Cox (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of death, grief, and bereavement: A guide to theory and practice (pp. 177–190). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Doka, K. J. (2008). Disenfranchised grief in historical and cultural perspective. In M. S. Stroebe, R. O. Hansson, H. Schut, & W. Stroebe (Eds.), Handbook of bereavement research and practice: Advances in theory and intervention (pp. 223–240). American Psychological Association.
Topic 3: Complicated or Prolonged Grief—Dimensions of Difficulty
Stillion, J. M., & Attig, T. (Eds.). (2014). Death, dying, and bereavement: Contemporary perspectives, institutions, and practices. Springer Publishing Company.
Neimeyer, R. A., Pitcho-Prelorentzos, S., & Mahat-Shamir, M. (2019). “If only…”: Counterfactual thinking in bereavement. Death Studies, 45(9), 692–701.
Shear, M. K. (2015). Complicated grief. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(2), 153–160.
Shear, M. K. (2012). Grief and mourning gone awry: Pathway and course of complicated grief. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 14(2), 119–128.
Frangou, C. (2016, December 16). The widowhood effect: What it’s like to lose a spouse in your thirties. Globe and Mail.
Topic 4: Superhero Grief—Learning Through Death, Loss, and Mourning Through Archetypes
Harrington, J. A., & Neimeyer, R. A. (Eds.). (2021). Superhero grief: The transformative power of loss. Routledge.
Topic 5: Creative Methods—Arts-Based Methods Within Guidance and Counselling
Creative Methods Part I, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Volume 46, Issue 3 (2018)
Creative Methods Part II, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Volume 48, Issue 1 (2020)
Living with Loss, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Volume 49, Issue 6 (2021)
Harris, J. (2019). This curious strangeness that is consoling: Psychoanalysis and poetic process. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 27(2), 294–299.
Topic 6: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Trauma
Dreifuss-Kattan, E. (2016). Art and mourning: The role of creativity in healing trauma and loss. Routledge.
Harris, J. (2020). An inheritance of terror: Postmemory and transgenerational transmission of trauma in second generation Jews after the Holocaust. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 80(1), 69–84.
Kirkby, J. (2006). “Remembrance of the future”: Derrida on mourning. Social Semiotics, 16(3), 461–472.
Stolorow, R. D. (2015). A phenomenological-contextual, existential, and ethical perspective on emotional trauma. The Psychoanalytic Review, 102(1), 123–138.
Topic 7: Spiritual and Existential Perspectives—Meaning-Making from Various Perspectives
Park, C. L., & Halifax, R. J. (2011). Religion and spirituality in adjusting to bereavement: Grief as burden, grief as gift. In R. A. Neimeyer, D. L. Harris, H. R. Winokuer & G. F. Thornton (Eds.), Grief and bereavement in contemporary society: Bridging research and practice (pp. 355–363). Routledge.
Ratcliffe, M. (2020). Towards a phenomenology of grief: Insights from Merleau‐Ponty. European Journal of Philosophy, 28(3), 657–669.
Topic 8: Sociological Perspectives—Part 1
Harris, D. (2021). Political grief. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 1–18.
Jacobsen, M. H., & Petersen, A. (2020). Exploring grief: Towards a sociology of sorrow. Routledge.
Topic 9: Sociological Perspectives—Part 2
Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization. Stanford University Press.
Topic 10: Embodiment: Grief, Trauma, and the Body in Healing
Viveiros, N. (2017). Review of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk: New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2014. 445 pp. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 22(2), 167–169.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). Body-brain connections. In The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (pp. 74–86). Penguin Books.
O’Connor M-F. (2019). Grief: A brief history of research on how body, mind, and brain adapt. Psychosomatic Medicine, 81(8) 731–738.
Payne, P., Levine, P. A., & Crane-Godreau, M. A. (2015). Somatic experiencing: Using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 93.
Alleger, I. (1998). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma Peter A. Levine with Ann Frederick. Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, E174, 13.
Finkbeiner, A. (2021, April 22). The biology of grief. New York Times.
Topic 11: Post-Traumatic Growth
Calhoun, L. G., & Tedeschi, R. G. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of posttraumatic growth: Research and practice. Routledge.

Autoethnographic Readings on Grief and Mourning

Arnold, A. (2020). Birthing autoethnographic philanthropy, healing, and organizational change. In A. F. Herrmann (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of organizational autoethnography. Routledge.
Baker-Bell, A. (2017). For Loretta: A Black woman literacy scholar’s journey to prioritizing self-preservation and Black feminist–womanist storytelling. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(4), 526–543.
Bray, P. (2019). Grief, loss and critical autoethnography: The father’s tale. In S. Farquhar & E. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Innovations in narrative and metaphor: Methodologies and practices (pp. 203–219). Springer.
Bochner, A. P. (1997). It’s about time: Narrative and the divided self. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(4), 418–438.
Bochner, A. P. (2012). Bird on the wire: Freeing the father within me. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(2), 168–173.
Clarke, D. W. (2017). Fighting against forgetting: Remembering the places where my relationship with my father came into being. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(6), 473–477.
Clarke, D. W. (2018). On the (im)possibility and bliss of telling my dad, “I love you.” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19(2), Art. 14.
Clarke, D. W. (2020). First my dad, then my iPhone: An autoethnographic sketch of digital death. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 21(2), Art. 8.
Cripe. E. T. (2018). Anticipating loss: Learning to live with my father’s cancer. Health Communication, 33(10), 1327–1330.
Davis, C. S. (2003). A dialogic farewell: Enhancing the “I-Thou” quality of a parent-child relationship. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 8(3), 201–215.
Davis, C. S., Snider, M. J., King, L., Shukraft, A., Sonda, J. D., Hicks, L., & Irvin, L. (2019). A time to live and a time to die: Heterotopian spatialities and temporalities in a pediatric palliative care team. Health Communication, 34(9), 931–941.
Davis, C. S., & Warren-Findlow, J. (2011). Coping with trauma through fictional narrative ethnography: A primer. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 16(6), 563–572.
Davis, C. S., & Warren-Findlow, J. (2012). The mystery of the troubled breast: Examining cancer and social support through fictional narrative ethnography. Qualitative Communication Research, 1(3), 291–314.
Ellis, C. (1993). “There are survivors”: Telling a story of sudden death. The Sociological Quarterly, 34(4), 711–730.
Ellis, C. (2002). Shattered lives: Making sense of September 11th and its aftermath. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 31(4), 375–410.
Ellis, C., & Patti, C. (2014). With heart: Compassionate interviewing and storytelling with Holocaust survivors. Storytelling, Self, Society, 10(1), 93–118.
Fox, R. (2010). Re-membering daddy: Autoethnographic reflections of my father and Alzheimer's disease. Text and Performance Quarterly, 30(1), 3–20.
Fox, R. (2010). “Ragan Fox is a gay slam poet”: An autobiographical exploration of performance poetry’s performative implications. Text and Performance Quarterly, 30(4), 420–429.
Fox, R. (2013). “Homo”-work: Queering academic communication and communicating queer in academia. Text and Performance Quarterly, 33(1), 58–76.
Frentz, T. S., & Hocker, J. L. (2010). Layered reflections on a written story through real-time conversation. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(8), 621–629.
Furman, R. (2005). Autoethnographic poems and narrative reflections: A qualitative study on the death of a companion animal. Journal of Family Social Work, 9(4), 23–38.
Gates, T. G., Beazley, H., & Davis, C. (2020). Coping with grief, loss, and well-being during a pandemic: A collaborative autoethnography of international educators during COVID-19. International Social Work, 63(6), 782–785.
Gloviczki, P. J. (2016). Leaving London: Three autoethnographic sketches. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 21(4), 286–289.
Hocker, J. L. (2010). It’s all come down to me: Meaning making with family artifacts. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 863–870.
Hocker, J. L. (2011). Turning toward tincup: A story of a home death. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(4), 325–331.
Jago, B. J. (2002). Chronicling an academic depression. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 31(6), 729–757.
Kallenberg, K. S. (2020). Some die young. Culture Unbound, 12(3), 485–505.
Lengelle, R. (2020). Writing the self and bereavement: Dialogical means and markers of moving through grief. Life Writing Journal, 17(1), 103–122.
Marzano, M. (2009). Lies and pain: Patients and caregivers in the “conspiracy of silence.” Journal of Loss and Trauma, 14(1), 57–81.
Matthews, A. (2019). Writing through grief: Using autoethnography to help process grief after the death of a loved one. Methodological Innovations, 12(3), 1–10.
McKenzie, E. A. (2015). An autoethnographic inquiry into the experience of grief after traumatic loss. Illness, Crisis & Loss, 23(2), 93–109.
McNichol, A. K. (2018). A beat of goodbye: An autoethnographic account of my last days with grandma. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 3(2), 325–348.
Phipps, C. B. (2018). Metamorphosis: An autoethnographic journey through loss, grief, and perceived identity changes. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 23(6), 458–467.
Poulos, C. N. (2006). The ties that bind us, the shadows that separate us: Life and death, shadow and (dream)story. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(1), 96-117.
Poulos, C. N. (2008). Narrative conscience and the autoethnographic adventure: Probing memories, secrets, shadows, and possibilities. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(1), 46–66.
Poulos, C. N. (2012). Writing through the memories: Autoethnography as a path to transcendence. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(3), 313–324.
Poulos, C. N. (2018). Accidental ethnography: An inquiry into family secrecy. Routledge.
Santoro, P. (2012). Relationally bare/bear: Bodies of loss and love. Cultural Studies/ Critical Methodologies, 12(2), 118–131.
Santoro, P. (2015). Performing landscapes of/and loss. Text and Performance Quarterly, 35(2/3), 234–254.
Santoro, P. (2016). Queerscape: Embodying landscape and rupture in auto/ethnography. International Review of Qualitative Research, 9(1), 107–136.
Sealy, P. A. (2012). Autoethnography: Reflective journaling and meditation to cope with life-threatening breast cancer. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 16(1), 38–41.
Sell-Smith, J., & Lax, W. (2013). A journey of pregnancy loss: From positivism to autoethnography. The Qualitative Report, 18(46), 1–17.
Spinazola, L. P., Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. (2021). Evocative autoethnography—Evoking is as evoking does. In I. Fourie (Ed.), Autoethnography for librarians and information scientists (pp. 33–48). Routledge.
Stephens, E. (2020). Homicide by police: Coping with traumatic death. Journal of Autoethnography, 1(2), 111–121.
Symonds LeBlanc, S. (2017). Goodbye, Daddy: An autoethnographic journey through the grief and mourning process. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 22(2), 110–119.
Symonds LeBlanc, S. (2020). “Surveilling the maternal body”: A critical examination through Foucault’s panopticon. The Qualitative Report, 25(11), 3885–3901.
Weaver-Hightower, M. B. (2012). Waltzing Matilda: An autoethnography of a father’s stillbirth. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41(4), 462–491.
Willer, E. K. (2019). The hea/r/tist part: Turning the point of mothering toward 100%. Health Communication, 34(9), 1069–1073.
Willer, E. K. (2021). Running-in(to) transition: Embodied practice under the load of infertility, loss, and motherhood. Health Communication, 36(10), 1176–1187.
Willer, E. K., Krebs, E., Castaneda, N., & Samaras, A. (2021). Mad to the bone: Learning outcomes of critical grief pedagogy. Communication Education, 70(1), 27–48.
Wyatt, J. (2010). What kind of mourning? Autoethnographic fragments. International Review of Qualitative Research, 2(4), 499–511.