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TIM POST: One of the classes Monte Bute teaches at Metropolitan State University is called Life of the Mind.

MONTE BUTE: Tonight we're shifting from the intellectual virtues.

TIM POST: Students in this master's level course dive into philosophy, medieval history, and literature. Tonight, they're preparing to watch the film The Seventh Seal by Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman.

MONTE BUTE: Any time I feel very Lutheran and tortured, I try to watch it.

TIM POST: In the film, death, portrayed as an ashen faced man wearing a black cloak, has come to take the life of a knight. The knight challenges death to a chess match. Death agrees but says if he wins, the knight dies.

It's one of Bute's favorite films. And at another time, he might have used it to prompt an abstract academic discussion. But now he says it carries potent symbolism that feels very real.

MONTE BUTE: Death showed up at my door on my birthday last year, and I have been playing him a game of chess. And I may win or lose, but I'm willing to keep taking it on.

TIM POST: Bute was diagnosed with a rare and terminal cancer 12 months ago. Bute's diagnosis went public when colleagues and students formed the Monte Bute fan club on Facebook. To date, there are more than 300 members in the group.

MONTE BUTE: And so what probably would have been a much more private experience suddenly thrust me into a public view with this.

TIM POST: That's when Bute decided to talk about his illness in the classroom. He says his theme for teaching over the last year has been dying in class, bringing sociology to life.

MONTE BUTE: This is a teachable moment. Americans are so into denial about death and dying that I can use this in along with sharing my own quest for some understanding and wisdom out of this process.

Tom O'Connell has watched Bute use his diagnosis to bring personal experience to the subject of death and dying. O'Connell teaches political studies at Metropolitan State.

TOM O'CONNELL: We all teach the social sciences, and the key idea is trying to, ourselves, and trying to get our students to be able to see themselves as in connected with other people and other social realities. And so to do that in a subject, any subject but something like death, is a real gift, and he's been able to pull it off.

TIM POST: In plain view of his students, Bute has at times struggled through his illness and its treatment. 20-year-old Natalie Baumgartner, a social science major from Coon Rapids, took Bute's class in social theory last fall. Baumgartner says Bute never stopped teaching, even though some days chemotherapy left him so weak he could barely drag himself to class. She says his determination kept students on track.

NATALIE BAUMGARTNER: Because what can you say to a terminal cancer patient? I don't feel well today? I think most of us had a really hard time with skipping class because it's like clearly this person is in much more pain than we are. The least we can do is show up.

TIM POST: The first thing you notice about Bute these days is just how upbeat he is, how full of life he seems. He says he isn't a man who's resigned to dying. But he's also not ignoring what he calls his death sentence. And teaching, he says, even now is what keeps him going.

MONTE BUTE: The illness and your aches and your pains fall away. And there's something happening in that space between you and students that's magical, that's mystical, that's profound. And it just sucks you in completely.

TIM POST: Monte Bute says he's going to keep teaching as long as he can. He doesn't know how long that might be but says he's not leaving the classroom until they have to carry him out. Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio news.