Navigating Loss in Women's Contemporary Memoir traces the grief process through the lives of contemporary women writers to show how its complex, multi-layered nature can encourage us towards new understandings of loss.

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.

Life writing often explores the profound impact of border crossings, both physical and metaphorical. Writers navigate personal and cultural boundaries, reflecting on identity, belonging, and the transformative power of crossing thresholds. These narratives unveil the complexities of migration, immigration, or internal journeys, offering intimate perspectives on adapting to new environments or confronting internal conflicts. Un/Bound is a collection of essays about such narratives, with an emphasis on mobility and border metaphors, the ethical dimensions of cross-border storytelling, and questions of access, translation, and circulation. Scholarly interest in borders, mobility, and related topics has greatly intensified in the context of public health emergencies and recent conflicts in international relations. The chapters in this book contribute to this dialogue by exploring internal and external, and physical and abstract borders and divisions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature, translation studies and political philosophy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

Designed as a contribution to the field of transnational comparative American studies, this book focuses on gender in life writing that exceeds the boundaries of traditional genres. The contributors engage with authors who bend genres to speak gender as it manifests in multiple shapes in different geographic locations across the Americas, and especially as it intersects with race and migration, war and colonialism, illness and ageing. In addition to supplying new insights into the established sites of auto/biographical production such as memoir, archive, and oral history, the book explores experimental mixed forms such as selfies, auto-theory, auto/bio comics, and autobiogeography. By combining this multi-genre and multi-media perspective with a multi-generational approach to life writing, the book showcases a spectrum of established and emerging critical voices, many of whom have been influenced by the work of Marlene Kadar, the Canadian life writing scholar whose interventions have expanded the feminist and interdisciplinary methods of life writing studies. Tracing the intergenerational relay of ideas, this collection fosters dialogue across the western hemisphere, and will be useful to those studying life writing exchanges between North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. This book was originally published as a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

Culturally powerful ideas of normalcy and deviation, individual responsibility, and what is medically feasible shape the ways in which we live with illness and disability. The essays in this volume show how illness narratives expressed in a variety of forms—biographical essays, fictional texts, cartoons, graphic novels, and comics—reflect on and grapple with the fact that these human experiences are socially embedded and culturally shaped. Works of fiction addressing the impact of an illness or disability; autobiographies and memoirs exploring an experience of medical treatment; and comics that portray illness or disability from the perspective of patient, family member, or caregiver: all of these narratives forge a specific aesthetic in order to communicate their understanding of the human condition. This collection demonstrates what can emerge when scholars and artists interested in fiction, life-writing, and comics collaborate to explore how various media portray illness, medical treatment, and disability. Rather than stopping at the limits of genre or medium, the essays talk across fields, exploring together how works in these different forms craft narratives and aesthetics to negotiate contention and build community around those experiences and to discover how the knowledge and experiences of illness and disability circulate within the realms of medicine, art, the personal, and the cultural. Ultimately, they demonstrate a common purpose: to examine the ways comics and literary texts build an audience and galvanize not just empathy but also action. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Einat Avrahami, Maureen Burdock, Elizabeth J. Donaldson, Ariela Freedman, Rieke Jordan, stef lenk, Leah Misemer, Tahneer Oksman, Nina Schmidt, and Helen Spandler. Chapter 7, “Crafting Psychiatric Contention Through Single-Panel Cartoons,” by Helen Spandler, is available as Open Access courtesy of a grant from the Wellcome Trust. A link to the OA version of this chapter is forthcoming.

Life hit Pat and Tammy McLeod hard when their son Zach collapsed on a high school football field; he had sustained a severe brain injury. Facing the devastating possibility that things would never be the same for their beloved son, they committed to staying strong as a family and finding a way to maintain their footing. But the journey would reshape their faith, their family, and their future in ways they never saw coming. What would it take for them to navigate the endless fallout of their son’s life-transforming injury? How could they reconcile their grief over the life Zach lost, with gratitude for the life that remained? And how does a couple move forward together in their search for hope, rather than letting indefinable loss drive them apart? Hit Hard is the true story of the McLeods’ journey through ambiguous loss—both having and not having their son. It’s the story of a family who faced unexpected heartbreak, a story that offers us all glimpses of how we can pick up the pieces, redefine expectations, and trust God for hope in the midst of unresolved pain.

By showcasing asset-based approaches inspired by individual reflection, research, and experience, this volume offers a fresh and timely perspective on grief and trauma within higher education and illustrates how these approaches can serve as opportunities for hope and allyship. Featuring a broad range of contributions from scholars and professionals involved in educational research and academia, Humanizing Grief in Higher Education explores the varied ways in which students, scholars, and educators experience and navigate grief and trauma. Set into four distinct parts, chapters deploy personal narratives situated within interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research frameworks to illustrate how issues such as race, gender, socio-economic class, and politics intersect with experiences of personal and professional grief in the academy. A variety of intersectional fields of study – from positive psychology, counselling, feminist and queer theories, to trauma theory and disability studies – inform an interdisciplinary framework for processing traumatic experiences and finding ways to hope. These narrative explorations are positioned as key to developing a sense of hope amongst the grieving and those supporting them. This text will benefit researchers, doctoral students, and academics in the fields of Higher Education, teacher education, trauma studies, and mental health education. Those interested in positive and educational psychology, as well as grief counselling in adults, will also enjoy this volume. Finally, this collection serves as a companion for those who find themselves grappling with losses, broadly defined.