UoB Grief Seminars: Dr Lesel Dawson, The Art of Grief: Creativity, Loss & the Imagination

About the event

What role does creativity play in grief? Why is it helpful in some circumstances but not others? Drawing on a range of artforms and current approaches to grief, this seminar will suggest that creativity can be an important tool in adaptive grieving, allowing us to make sense of what has happened and connect to those who have died. Creative practices can also capture the ambiguity and ambivalence of grief, and can accommodate complex emotions without the need to resolve or rationalise them. In cases of disenfranchised grief, art can provide a means to rewrite the narrative and have a bereavement socially acknowledged. In this way, art allows for a particularly vivid and experiential form of witnessing.

Lesel Dawson is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Bristol, and the co-director of the Good Grief Festival and the Bristol Centre for Grief Research and Engagement. Her research interests include grief, creativity and the history of the emotions. She wrote Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern Literature, co-edited the essay collection Revenge and Gender from Classical to Renaissance Literature, and has published scholarship on a range of other topics, including hallucinations, trauma and shame. Her work includes co-producing two short films on grief, children, and creativity; partnering with charities on an article on mandatory grief education; collaborating on an illustrated booklet on grief and baby loss; writing the screenplay for a film about disenfranchised grief; and working with theatre company Crowded Room and a group of bereaved people on an audio story. She is currently writing a book on grief and creativity.

This event is part of a new seminar series organised by the Bristol Centre for Grief Research and Engagement, in association with Good Grief Festival.

The seminar will be online and we will send the link to all registered attendees around 24 hours before the start time. If you have any questions, please email: [email protected]