Overview

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.

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9781350204331

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Reviews

This Handbook is a most timely contribution to aging studies. It distinguishes itself from others not only because it addresses a wide range of both literary (fiction, drama, and poetry) and film genres (movies, media, TV series, etc.) but also in its encompassing an equally large sample of cultural contexts and case studies, ranging from Europe to Hollywood to Latin America to Japan. Moreover, its intersectional focus allows us to see age as a fundamental yet relational category of analysis, which cannot and should not be separated from gender, sexuality, racialization, class, or functional diversity, amongst others. A must-read to anyone interested in aging, literature and film studies in their broadest sense. Highly recommended! * Professor Josep M. Armengol, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Gender Studies, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain * Combining theoretically sophisticated discussions of current concepts in Age Studies with comprehensive analyses of a wide range of literary texts and films from different cultural backgrounds, this handbook provides stimulating insights into the ideological construction and embodied experience of ageing. A highly significant publication that convincingly connects scholarly expertise and political awareness. * Professor Dr. Irmela Marei Kruger-Furhoff, Professor of German Literature, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany * This handbook is nothing but foundational for age and ageing studies. Taking stock of 30 years of research, it offers an invaluable state of the art of the discipline with a comprehensive section on genre, and a finely curated segment on themes and concepts. The handbook also manages to make space for what is at the core of humanities-based research, namely in-depth case studies of singular works of art. I am particularly pleased to see an inclusion of non-Western perspectives throughout the handbook. This book is a must-read. * Dr. Anita Wohlmann, , Associate Professor of Contemporary Anglophone Literature, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark *

This Handbook is a most timely contribution to aging studies. It distinguishes itself from others not only because it addresses a wide range of both literary (fiction, drama, and poetry) and film genres (movies, media, TV series, etc.) but also in its encompassing an equally large sample of cultural contexts and case studies, ranging from Europe to Hollywood to Latin America to Japan. Moreover, its intersectional focus allows us to see age as a fundamental yet relational category of analysis, which cannot and should not be separated from gender, sexuality, racialization, class, or functional diversity, amongst others. A must-read to anyone interested in aging, literature and film studies in their broadest sense. Highly recommended! * Professor Josep M. Armengol, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain *

Author Information

Sarah Falcus is a a Reader in Contemporary Literature at the University of Huddersfield. She is the co-author (with Katsura Sako) of Contemporary Narratives of Dementia: Ethics, Ageing, Politics and is the Primary Collaborator on the project 'Ageing and Illness in British and Japanese Children's Picturebooks 1950-2000: Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives', funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. She is also the co-director of the Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network. https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/persons/sarah-falcus Heike Hartung has published widely in interdisciplinary ageing studies. Recent publications include Ageing, Gender and Illness in Anglophone Literature and Embodied Narration. She is a founding member of the European Network in Ageing Studies and co-editor of the Transcript Aging Studies publication series. http://www.heikehartung.de/en/ Raquel Medina is Senior Lecturer in Spanish Studies at Aston University, UK. She has published numerous articles and chapters on representations of ageing in film, fiction and non-fiction narrative, and poetry. She is the author of Cinematic Representations of Alzheimer's Disease and the Director of the International Research Network CinemAGEnder, and co-director of Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network. https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/persons/raquel-medina

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