1st Edition
Grief Memoirs Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance
Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance bridges literary studies and psychology to evaluate contemporary grief memoirs for use by bereaved and non-bereaved individuals. This volume positions the grief memoir within life writing and bereavement studies through examination of the genre’s characteristics, definitions, and functions. The book presents the views of memoirists, helping professionals, community members, and university students on writing and reading as self-expressive, self-searching, and grief-witnessing acts after the loss of a loved one. Utilizing new data from surveys assessing grief support and bibliotherapy, this text discusses the compatibility of grief memoirs with contemporary grief theories and the role of interdisciplinary methods in assisting the bereaved. Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance will help educators advance the understanding and interpretation of loss within psychology, literature, and medical humanities classrooms.
Introduction
1. The Grief Memoir: Meditations upon the Genre
2. Grief Witnessing in Research and Grief Memoirs
3. Grief Witnessing through Grief Memoirs: Survey
4. Bibliotherapy: Existing Research
5. Bibliotherapy in Practice: Survey and Beyond
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Biography
Katarzyna A. Małecka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Lodz, Poland. Dr. Małecka is the author of numerous publications on death and grief in literature. She has been awarded three international scholarships to conduct her research on loss and bereavement: the interdisciplinary research grant by the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna to study the bibliotherapeutic aspects of literature in work with grieving children; the Fulbright Senior Award Scholarship for her project on the use of modern bereavement memoirs in grief therapy; and the Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship to study the grief witnessing, bibliotherapeutic, and educational aspects of grief memoirs. She is currently working on her new project exploring the bibliotherapeutic application of grief narratives in the clinical setting and their use in the education of future helping professionals.
