Queer Aging in North American Fiction


Book Description

Exploring representations of queer aging in North American fiction, this book illuminates a rich yet previously unheeded intersection within American culture. At a time when older LGBTQ persons gradually gain visibility in gerontological studies and in the media, this work provides a critical perspective concerned with the ways in which the narratives and images we have at our disposal shape our realities. Each chapter shines a spotlight on a significant work of queer fiction, beginning with post-WWII novels and ending with filmic representations of the 2010s, exploring narratives as both reflections and agents of broader cultural negotiations concerning queer sexuality and aging. As a result, the book not only redresses queer aging’s history of invisibility, but also reveals narratives of queer aging to be particularly apt in casting new light on the ways in which growing older is perceived and conceptualized in North American culture.







The Bloomsbury Handbook to Ageing in Contemporary Literature and Film


Book Description

Across more than 30 chapters spanning migration, queerness, and climate change, this handbook captures how the interdisciplinary and intersectional endeavor of Age(ing) studies has shaped contemporary literary and film studies. In the early 21st century, the literary study of age and ageing in its cultural context has 'come of age': it has come to supplement and challenge a public discourse on ageing seen mainly as a political and demographic 'problem' in many countries of the world. Following a tripartite structure, it looks first at literary and film genres and how they have been shaped by knowledge about age and ageing, incorporating both narrative genres as well as poetry, drama and imagery. The second section includes chapters on key themes and concepts in Age(ing) Studies with examples from film and literature. The third section brings together case studies focussing on individual artists, national traditions and global ageing. Containing original contributions by pioneers in the field as well as new scholars from across the globe, it brings together current scholarship on ageing in literary and film studies, and offers new directions and perspectives.




Aging Studies and Ecocriticism


Book Description

Aging Studies and Ecocriticism: Interdisciplinary Encounters argues that both aging studies and ecocriticism address the complex dynamics of individual and collective agency, oppression and dependency, care and conviviality, vulnerability and resistance as well as intergenerationality and responsibility. Yet, even though both fields employ overlapping methodologies and theoretical frameworks and scrutinize “boundary texts” in different literary genres, which have been analyzed from ecocritical perspectives as well as from the vantage point of critical aging studies, there has been little scholarly interaction between ecocritical literary studies and aging studies to date. The contributors in this volume demonstrate the potential of specific genres to narrate relationality and age, and the aesthetic and ethical challenges of imagining changes, endings, and survival in the Anthropocene. As the first step towards putting both fields in conversation, this collection offers new pathways into understanding human and nonhuman ecological relations.




Aging Experiments


Book Description

The sustained expansion of the life span and the attendant demographic changes in the West have fuelled the production of cultural texts that explore alternative representations of aging and old age. The contributors to this volume show how artists in science-fiction, fantasy and the avant-garde develop visions of late life transformation, improvisation and adaptation to new circumstances. The studies particularly focus on perspectives on aging that challenge the predominant narratives of decline as well as fantasies of eternal youth, as defined by neoliberal notions of health, able-bodiedness, agency, self-improvement, progress, plasticity and productivity.




Literature and Ageing


Book Description

New approaches to the topics of old age and becoming old depicted in a range of texts from modern literature.




Cross Generational Relationships and Cinema


Book Description

Depictions of cross generational relationships have always been present in popular cinema. While such relationships have historically operated within the framework of heteronormativity, and have usually explored cross generational romance in the context of older men/younger women, contemporary depictions have expanded to focus also on taboo configurations of love between older women and younger men and cross generational LGBT coupledom. Contemporary depictions have sought to complicate not only heteronormativity in cross generational relationships, but also to navigate the differences between socially acceptable love and transgressive desire. This collection focuses on the changing values and attitudes of cross generational relationships and addresses the often divisive relationship between the discourses of youth and ageing in popular culture.




No Country for Old Age


Book Description

Since the birth of their nation, Americans have acted on the belief that theirs was a land of youth, a place destined to offer a fresh start to an aging world. No Country for Old Age tells this story from the founding period to our present moment, but not without exposing its darker side: rejuvenation has often bred grand expectations that end in division and despair. Mischa Honeck reveals how Americans of diverse backgrounds have sought not only to feel and look younger but also to breathe new life into their communities. Whether marching under the banners of science, public health, sexual liberation, physical fitness, nation-building, or world peace, these youth seekers have tended to paint their ventures in utopian colors. However, from the founders to today’s Silicon Valley elites, anti-aging ventures have repeatedly magnified social inequalities, often projecting visions of society that have been unmistakably classist, racist, misogynist, and ageist. Today we are experiencing rejuvenation’s Janus-faced legacy: As transhumanists rhapsodize about cyber-enhancing human bodies, ghastly pandemics, old-age poverty, and shrinking life expectancies are poised to become the new normal for many twenty-first-century Americans.




Ageing and the Media


Book Description

Bringing together leading scholars, this international collection examines different dimensions of ageing and ageism in a range of media and how older adults use and interact with the media.




Space Oddities


Book Description

"Space Oddities: Difference and Identity in the American City" approaches a space (and place) central to the American imagination-the city. In particular, this volume discusses the paradoxes of American cities and American urban life. In this way, the book critically engages with the paradoxes of the American identity, embodied by cultural practices in, and cultural representations of, urban life in the United States. (Series: American Studies in Austria, Vol. 16) [Subject: Sociology, American Studies, Cultural Studies, Urban Studies]