Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Ageing and Later Life – serie

Bringing together insights from masculinity studies and age studies, this open access book focuses on the gendered and relational perspectives in cultural representations of Alzheimer’s disease.Combining a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the authors analyse the interrelations between masculinities and representations of dementia from a wide range of cultural contexts to explore it as an intensely gendered and cultural disease.They examine memoir, film, poetry and prose fiction, and look at work from a wide range of authors, including Anne Carson, Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, to provide new insights into established narratives of dementia and explore the complex ways that the disease resists representation and narration and questions traditional views of selfhood and human development.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the ERA Gender-Net+ Project MASCAGE, the University of Graz (Center for Inter-American Studies) and the Government of Styria, Austria.

Focusing on the contemporary period, this book brings together critical age studies and contemporary science fiction to establish the centrality of age and ageing in dystopian, speculative and science-fiction imaginaries. Analysing texts from Europe, North America and South Asia, as well as television programmes and films, the contributions range from essays which establish genre-based trends in the representation of age and ageing, to very focused studies of particular texts and concerns. As a whole, the volume probes the relationship between speculative/science fiction and our understanding of what it is to be a human in time: the time of our own lives and the times of both the past and the future.

Focusing on the contemporary period, this book brings together critical age studies and contemporary science fiction to establish the centrality of age and ageing in dystopian, speculative and science-fiction imaginaries. Analysing texts from Europe, North America and South Asia, as well as television programmes and films, the contributions range from essays which establish genre-based trends in the representation of age and ageing, to very focused studies of particular texts and concerns. As a whole, the volume probes the relationship between speculative/science fiction and our understanding of what it is to be a human in time: the time of our own lives and the times of both the past and the future.

Bringing together insights from masculinity studies and age studies, this open access book focuses on the gendered and relational perspectives in cultural representations of Alzheimer’s disease.Combining a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the authors analyse the interrelations between masculinities and representations of dementia from a wide range of cultural contexts to explore it as an intensely gendered and cultural disease.They examine memoir, film, poetry and prose fiction, and look at work from a wide range of authors, including Anne Carson, Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, to provide new insights into established narratives of dementia and explore the complex ways that the disease resists representation and narration and questions traditional views of selfhood and human development.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the ERA Gender-Net+ Project MASCAGE, the University of Graz (Center for Inter-American Studies) and the Government of Styria, Austria.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as ‘how can we understand ageing and later life?’ and ‘how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?’ As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us.This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing – counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors.

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as ‘how can we understand ageing and later life?’ and ‘how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?’ As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us.This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing – counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors.

Framing Ageing, available open access, addresses scholars from across the Humanities and Social Sciences who want to approach the urgent topic of old age in their work, mapping the intellectual state of the field and putting the most salient concepts in action.Bringing together established and emerging scholars of old age from the humanities and social sciences as well as gerontologists and medical practitioners, this open access book showcases new scholarship and provides new methods and terms for ongoing conversations about old age as an object of analysis in contemporary culture.Cultural policy makers and scholars alike regularly describe a “visibility crisis” of old age, a consistent erasure or repression of images of older people from public view. Co-edited by an art historian and two literary scholars with a shared interest in memory, Framing Ageing examines the in/visibility of old age from a range of disciplinary angles, including philosophy, social history, comparative literature and anthropology. In addition to examining literary texts, this volume includes a chapter in graphic form and carries out innovative analyses of film, the built environment, fine art and commercial images.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

Framing Ageing, available open access, addresses scholars from across the Humanities and Social Sciences who want to approach the urgent topic of old age in their work, mapping the intellectual state of the field and putting the most salient concepts in action.Bringing together established and emerging scholars of old age from the humanities and social sciences as well as gerontologists and medical practitioners, this open access book showcases new scholarship and provides new methods and terms for ongoing conversations about old age as an object of analysis in contemporary culture.Cultural policy makers and scholars alike regularly describe a “visibility crisis” of old age, a consistent erasure or repression of images of older people from public view. Co-edited by an art historian and two literary scholars with a shared interest in memory, Framing Ageing examines the in/visibility of old age from a range of disciplinary angles, including philosophy, social history, comparative literature and anthropology. In addition to examining literary texts, this volume includes a chapter in graphic form and carries out innovative analyses of film, the built environment, fine art and commercial images.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

In this major new study, James Aaron Green provides the first account of literary thought experiments published from 1878 to 1918 that speculate on the prospect of radically longer lives. Green argues that these fictions helped negotiate the emergent experiences and meanings of age and aging during years when long-established norms were being eroded and supplanted. By recovering fictions by lesser-known writers and re-evaluating those by more familiar writers like H. G. Wells and J. M. Barrie, the study reveals the surprising abundance and formal diversity of such speculative accounts. Through readings supported by archival materials (anti-aging advertisements, medical treatises), these accounts are shown to have intervened on a wide range of scientific and social questions related to age and aging – from transfusion to colonialism, and second chances to apocalyptic demography. Ultimately, Green’s innovative historicist study proves how close attention to fictions of radical life extension can not only renovate our understanding of historical attitudes to age and aging, but also those of today.

Based on close readings of three major sitcoms, this book unpacks how sitcoms understand later life sexualities and focusses on how they represent sexually active older adults.Focusing on three representative sitcoms - Waiting for God, The Old Guys and Vicious - it demonstrates the ways in which sitcoms specifically enable and restrict representations of later life sexualities. Tracing how transgressive portrayals of sexually active older adults are couched in comedic terms, it opens up new critical perspectives on later life sexualities that will critically inform public debates and academic research – in Britain and beyond.