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Death Education in the Writing Classroom
Jeffrey Berman
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Death, Value and Meaning Series, Dale A. Lund, Series Editor
Read the Introduction now
Congratulations to author Jeffrey Berman!
Department of English Professor Jeffrey Berman is honored in a new book from the Princeton Review, The Best 300 Professors (Random House, 2012), which profiles teachers in 60 different fields of study. The results are based on input from thousands of students regarding educators encountered during their college careers. Berman was one of 22 professors chosen in the field of English, and one of 25 honored overall from New York State.
Click here to read the full story
Professor Berman was interviewed on The Roundtable, an award-winning, nationally recognized eclectic talk program on WAMC Radio. Listen to the archive.
IN PRAISE OF
"This book should provide the courage for others to teach death education in the writing classroom. The growth and development of Berman’s students are dramatic. Their thinking, sharing of feelings, writing skills, and understanding of their own feelings and experiences are clearly improved throughout the course. Death Education in the Writing Classroom is a powerful, fulfilling book to read. The students themselves clearly attest to the value of the book and its use in the course. As an educator, I found many invaluable teaching tips. This is an excellent book that should set a standard for the field of death education in writing classes. The experiences of the instructor/author provide superb insights on teaching and learning."
—Dr. Gerry R. Cox, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Center for Death Education & Bioethics, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
"In an outstanding series of books, Jeff Berman has taught the rest of us how one can teach writing by teaching life. He shows us how to address issues wrenchingly real to our students but usually left at the classroom door: love and the failures of love, divorce, trauma, therapy, cutting, abortion, and parenting. Now, he has written the first book to combine the teaching of writing with students’ week-by-week feelings toward death. It is an extraordinary read."
—Norman N. Holland, Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus, University of Florida
"Death Education in the Writing Classroom is an emotionally riveting, intellectually stimulating, profound contribution to death education, from a wise, reflective teacher."
—David E. Balk, Professor and Director, Graduate Studies in Thanatology, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
"This remarkable book is essentially a 'verbal video' of Berman’s Love and Loss course taught as a writing class in Spring 2008 at the University of Albany in upstate New York. It vividly captures the poignant losses and profound reflections that undergraduate students experienced and expressed in their writing. The 20 chapters are ordered in two sections (Part I: Diaries; Part II: Breakthroughs) and his detailed syllabus, including the thought-provoking writing assignments, is included. The level of self-disclosure is notable, making the book an insightful glimpse into the universal, and yet always unique, journey of grief."
—Rev. Paul A. Metzler, The FORUM, January 2012, Volume 38, Issue 1
ABOUT THE BOOK
Death is often encountered in English courses—Hamlet’s death, celebrity death, death from the terrorist attacks on 9/11—but students rarely have the opportunity to write about their own experiences with death. In Death Education in the Writing Classroom, Jeffrey Berman shows how college students can write safely about dying, death, and bereavement. The book is based on an undergraduate course on love and loss that Berman taught at the University at Albany in 2008. Part 1, “Diaries,” is organized around Berman’s diary entries written immediately after each class. These entries provide a week-by-week glimpse of class discussions, highlighting his students’ writings and their developing bonds with classmates and teacher. Part 2, "Breakthroughs," focuses on several students’ important educational and psychological discoveries in their understanding of love and loss. The student writings touch on many aspects of death education, including disenfranchised grief. The book explores how students write about not only mourning and loss but also depression, cutting, and abortion—topics that occupy the ambiguous border of death-in-life.
Death Education in the Writing Classroom is the first book to demonstrate how love and loss can be taught in a college writing class—and the first to describe the week-by-week changes in students’ cognitive and affective responses to death. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to writing teachers, students, clinicians, and bereavement counselors.
Intended Audience: This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to educators, clinicians, social scientists, bereavement counselors, cultural studies theorists, graduate and undergraduate students, and anyone who wishes to learn more about death education.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey Berman is Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University at Albany. He received his Ph.D. in English at Cornell University in 1971 and served as a research scholar at the Training Institute of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York City from 1980 to 1983. Berman is the recipient of the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Advising and the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he is listed in the Dictionary of International Biography, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Education, and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. He is the author of twelve books and more than 100 book chapters, articles, and reviews. He has also served as Series Editor for Literature and Psychoanalysis, published by New York University Press. Berman’s books and articles on teaching have been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed and on National Public Radio. As a result of the death of his wife, Barbara, in 2004, he has focused his teaching, lecturing, and writing on death education, including, most recently, Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning (SUNY Press, 2007), Death in the Classroom: Writing about Love and Loss (SUNY Press, 2009), and Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C.S. Lewis, John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion, and Calvin Trillin (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010). He lives in Albany, New York, with his cherished companion, Julie.
Please Note: Death Education in the Writing Classroom is available in both cloth and paperbound.
To order the paperbound version use the Add to Cart link on the right.
To order the clothbound version, click here.
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