Mike Alvarez, PhD

PEDAGOGY AND ANDRAGOGY EXPERT

Pronouns: he/him/his and they/them/theirs

Mike Alvarez, PhD, MFA, is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire, where he teaches courses in mental health communication, end of life communication, human communication and technology, and film studies. He is the author of The Paradox of Suicide and Creativity: Authentications of Human Existence (Lexington, 2020), and Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Renewal (Routledge, forthcoming). He is also lead author of A Plague for Our Time: Dying and Death in the Age of COVID-19 (McFarland, forthcoming), and lead editor of Suicide in Popular Media and Culture (Bristol University Press, in progress). Dr. Alvarez is the recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship and an Outstanding Creative Project/Performance Award from the National Communication Association’s Asian/Pacific American Studies Division and Caucus.

His non-academic interests include literary memoir, survival horror and story-driven video games, genre films and television (horror, fantasy/sci-fi, and queer romance), and the curious lives of cats (he has two).

Position Statement:

“As the Pedagogy and Andragogy Expert, my aim is to create a repository of resources on death pedagogy for scholars and educators in (and outside) the discipline of Communication. Such resources would include sample syllabi, reading and viewing lists, writing prompts and assignments, grading rubrics, and a bibliography of relevant scholarship on teaching about death. My hope is that the repository will help instructors design end of life/death communication courses of their own; feel prepared to deliver this content in various educational settings; understand the emotional labor demanded by death pedagogy; and contribute to the repository with resources of their own.”