"Death and mourning in the present day are almost analogous to sexual impulses in the Victorian age," said Sandra Gilbert, the M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell, in a talk, "Modern Death, Millennial Mourning: The Challenge of 21st Century Grief," on April 27.

She continued: "Just like good women were not supposed to feel them and respected men knew how to keep them under control, our society is embarrassed to confront a display of bereavement."

Blending dual visions of a poet and a critic, Gilbert focused on the psychology of pain and recovery associated with death. She dissected American society's cultural conditioning that equates mourning to an embarrassment or a disease in its own right.

Gilbert's recent book, "Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve," mingled different genres of cultural studies and literary history. The book also was a tool for her to process the loss of her husband. "I felt driven to claim my grief," she reflected.

Speaking to a full house in Anabel Taylor Hall, Gilbert expressed her discomfort at the modern-day trivialization of grief. She said, "Grief therapy -- most of it designed to ensure that the bereaved will healthily 'recover' -- is now so widely practiced that although its efficacy is dubious, it's become a lucrative industry."

Her lecture was followed by a conversation with Joseph Loizzo, M.D., director of the Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Robert Smith, Cornell Catholic chaplain. Loizzo, who also holds a Ph.D. in Indo-Tibetan studies, spoke about grief and mourning traditions in the East.

"From the Buddhist point of view, the shared culture is that of Karma. Our actions create our destiny," he said. Using the example of a sky burial ceremony (where the body is dismembered and offered to vultures), detailed in "The Tibetan Book of Dead," Loizzo presented the Buddhist idea of mental transition. "The body decays, but the mind continues to live on. The dismembering is an act of recycling something which you no longer need.

"Westerners continue to feel embarrassed when it comes to dealing with mourning and grief because we do not share a common philosophy on death," he said. "On the other hand, the unifying Buddhist principles of cause and effect and the intergenerational nature of the mind allow one to come to terms with the death of a loved one and yet stay connected to him or her."

Lamenting the lack of nonclinical language to describe death and bereavement, Smith expressed the need for poets. He urged individuals to forge links to a community. "Oddly enough, mourning lets you do just that," he concluded.

The event was sponsored by Cornell United Religious Work, the CRESP Center for Transformative Action, the Cornell Catholic Community and the Namgyal Monastery Institute for Buddhist Studies.

Graduate student Kanika Arora is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.