Program Description                

The popular appeal and multi-cultural embrace of modern-day superhero narratives offers an approachable medium for illustrating the struggles of loss, grief, and bereavement.  Social workers are at the forefront of assisting those who have endured profound loss, especially bereavement.  They also play a pivotal role in helping companioning the dying and the bereaved through life’s most universal and distressing experience of coping with life after loss.  In addition, social workers in various settings often find themselves assisting those affected by the intersection of death loss and trauma (COVID-19, homicide, suicide, overdose, accidental death, sudden natural death, trauma from natural dying), as either the presenting issue or as part of a client’s history.  While there are numerous resources that exist for social workers in end-of-life care, formal social work education and professional training in bereavement is often limited.

This symposium will highlight how superhero stories can be used to demonstrate modern thanatology theories, concepts, and clinical strategies to students, clinicians, educators, and the bereaved.  This one-day presentation will focus on the use of modern day superhero narratives to explore Transformative Grief, Bereavement Advocacy, Grief and Loss in the Black Community, Art-Informed Grief Therapy Techniques as well as Empowering Social Workers in Self-Care as Grief Leaders.  Our invited presenters are esteemed professionals in the field of Thanatology, who are clinicians, educators, academics, and advocates as well as authors from the newly published book by Routledge, Superhero Grief: The Transformative Power of Loss, who will highlight teachable moments throughout superhero visual arts relatable to these topics.  Presenters will share multiple perspectives, increase knowledge in each of these topic areas, provide case presentations, share strategies and discuss recommendations to foster adaption to loss, growth and transformation in supporting the bereaved, with a special focus on those affected by the intersection of death and trauma.

Learning Objectives

1. Improve understanding of the modern thanatology theories and concepts through superhero metaphorical learning.
2. Describe a creative art-informed grief process that is grounded in Rynearson’s Restorative Retelling. 
3. Discuss the gaps in national bereavement policies and the role of social workers as advocates.
4. Recognize the intersectional lens in which themes in the Black Panther film mirror patterns of traumatic violent loss, non-death loss, and cumulative loss in Black communities. 
5. Increase clinician competence in successfully assuming a leadership role in response to a traumatic loss impacting their personal/professional network. 
6. Describe at least three essential elements of grief management and self-care derived from the experiences of Captain America.

Agenda

9 am:            Opening: Jill Harrington-LaMorie, DSW, LCSW

                     Superhero Grief: The Transformative Power of Loss

9:45 am:      15 minute Break

10 am:          Joyal Mulheron, MS

Being Your Own Neighborhood Spiderman: Bereavement and Advocacy Efforts

10:45 am:     15 minute Break

11 am:          Tashel Bordere, PhD

Exploring Grief in the Black Community through the Eyes of the Black Panther

Noon            Lunch Break

1 pm:            Sharon Strouse, MA, ATR-BC, LCPAT 

Art-Informed Grief Therapy and How the Flash Could Benefit from Restorative Retelling

2 pm:            Closing: Jim Martin, PhD, ACSW, LICSW (Ret.)

Social Workers as Grief Leaders: What We Can Learn from the Life and Service of Captain America

3 pm:           Program Ends