A Conceptualization of Sufjan Stevens’s Bereavement Process as Seen in his Album, Carrie, and Lowell Through Several Contemporary Mechanisms for Grief and Bereavement

Picker, Jake

A Conceptualization of Sufjan Stevens’s Bereavement Process as Seen in his Album, Carrie, and Lowell Through Several Contemporary Mechanisms for Grief and Bereavement

dc.contributor.advisor	Hoy, William
dc.contributor.author	Picker, Jake
dc.contributor.department	Biology.	en_US
dc.contributor.schools	Medical Humanities Program	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2021-05-21T13:50:28Z
dc.date.available	2021-05-21T13:50:28Z
dc.date.copyright	2021-04-28
dc.date.issued	2021-05-21
dc.description.abstract	Sufjan Stevens is a singer-songwriter with a very complicated relationship with his mother, Carrie. She struggled with mental illness and substance dependency and eventually left Sufjan and the rest of her family when he was only one year old. Carrie would eventually reconnect with Sufjan in Eugene, Oregon for several summers throughout his early childhood. During these summers, Sufjan grew closer with his mother and would provide him with the memories he would later reflect upon after her death. When Carrie died in 2012, Sufjan spiraled into depression and experienced a prolonged and deeply painful bereavement process. To grieve his loss, find meaning through his experiences, and organize his thoughts about his mother, Sufjan channeled his grief into his music and produced eleven songs about his bereavement process. This thesis aims to conceptualize the grief Sufjan sings about within this album by analyzing the lyrics through the perspectives of four mechanisms for grief and bereavement. I will use models on grief and bereavement by Hoy (2016), Worden (2018), Gillies and Niemeyer (2006), and Stroebe and Schut (2010) in my analysis.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/2104/11331
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.rights	Baylor University projects are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.	en_US
dc.rights.accessrights	Worldwide access	en_US
dc.title	A Conceptualization of Sufjan Stevens’s Bereavement Process as Seen in his Album, Carrie, and Lowell Through Several Contemporary Mechanisms for Grief and Bereavement	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US