The Aging Cluster within the Center for Uses of Literature brings together scholars with research interests in representations of (older) age, retirement, gendered aging, motherhood, care, life narratives, life endings, genre (such as poetry, seriality), age metaphors and stereotypes. With an approach to age and aging more generally, the group’s members take a life course approach to age, which allows us to also focus on middle age, (young) adulthood and childhood, and how these age stages relate to older age (e.g. intergenerational ties).
The group’s research and activities draw on conceptualizations of age as a malleable, contingent concept. Age and aging are both lived experiences and socio-cultural categories, which are shaped by norms, find expression in specific genres and intersect with other concepts, ‘objects’ and cultural categories (gender, race, class, temporality, care work). In age studies, also called literary and cultural gerontology, the phenomena of age and aging are studied from cross-disciplinary angles with a focus on theories and methods from the humanities and the arts.
In the Aging Cluster, we explore the uses of literature and other aesthetic and cultural artefacts with an interest in how they represent and grapple with the complexities and ambiguities of old age and aging. For example, how do literary and cultural artefacts respond to cultural stereotypes? In what way do they offer resources for new and more progressive cultural imaginaries of what it means to grow older? And how do literary texts and other art forms offer different ways of understanding (linear) temporalities and the meanings we attach to them?
The Aging Cluster draws on an international network to advance the study of age and aging, such as the European Network in Aging Studies (ENAS) and the North American Network in Aging Studies (NANAS). In addition, the journal Age, Culture, Humanities, which is now hosted by Der Konglige Bibliotek and SDU, serves as a platform for peer-reviewed research.
Coordinator and contact person: Anita Wohlmann
Members:
Camilla Schwartz
Charlotte Johanne Fabricius
Ella Fegitz
Emily Hogg
Ida Aaskov Dolmer
Marie-Elisabeth Lei Pihl
Nicklas Freisleben Lund
Peter Simonsen