UoB Grief Seminars: Prof Kathleen Higgins, Aesthetic Approaches to Healing in Grief

About the event

The death of a loved one separates us from that person and estranges us from the world and other people. Grieving people are commonly reluctant to get back in sync with the social world as it presses toward the future, and they feel that it would be disloyal to the deceased. They might also find worldly goals unattractive.

In this seminar, Prof. Kathleen Higgins will explore ways in which aesthetic practices can facilitate adjustment in grief and restore connections with others. They can ground us, promote reflection, enable sharing that does not depend on distracting ourselves from the loss, suggest possible ways of responding in the new circumstances, and even serve as a means of connecting to the deceased. Aesthetic practices demonstrate that reconnecting with the living world does not depend on abandoning efforts to maintain relationships with the dead. Not only do they give us resources for dealing with loss, they also help us recognise our role in the transgenerational human project of making meaning and sharing it with others.

Kathleen Higgins is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in aesthetics, philosophy of emotion, philosophy of music, and nineteenth and twentieth-century continental philosophy. She has published many articles and eight books, most recently Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning (University of Chicago Press, 2024). She is also editor or co-editor of eight additional books, which explore such topics as aesthetics, world philosophy, German Idealism, Nietzsche, erotic love, and the philosophy of Robert C. Solomon. She is a former president of the American Society for Aesthetics.

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

The seminar will be online and will be held in UK time (BST). 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]