In Death in the Classroom, Jeffrey Berman writes about Love and Loss, the course that he designed and taught two years after his wife’s death, in which he explored with his students the literature of bereavement. Berman, building on his previous courses that emphasized self-disclosing writing, shows how his students wrote about their own experiences with love and loss, how their writing affected classmates and teacher alike, and how writing about death can lead to educational and psychological breakthroughs. In an age in which eighty percent of Americans die not in their homes but in institutions, and in which, consequently, the living are separated from the dying, Death in the Classroom reveals how reading, writing, and speaking about death can play a vital role in a student’s education.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Getting Started
2. Writing an Obituary
3. Writing a Eulogy
4. On Teaching the Book of Job—and Being Denounced as a“False Prophet”
5. Writing on Religion and Death
6. Cathy’s Letter to Her Deceased Mother in
Wuthering Heights
7. A Problem with Another Student, and Evaluating the Evaluator
8. Ten Things to Do before I Die
9. Writing about Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide
10. Writing about Jeff’s Former Students in
Empathic Teaching
11. A Teacher’s Self-Eulogy
Appendix A: “Helping or Harming Students?” Richard Bower
Appendix B: “Writing Has Saved My Life, ” Breanna’s Story
Appendix C: “Literature, If Anything, Will Save Me, ”Sara E. Murphy
Appendix D: English 226: Love and Loss in Literature and Life
Works Cited
Student Writers
Index
About the author
Jeffrey Berman is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His previous books include
Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning, also published by SUNY Press;
Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure;
Empathic Teaching: Education for Life; and
Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom.
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