Trained within the English program, the panelists engage with the topic of aging through literary methods and show how the age lens can inform our understanding of literary history and criticism. As interdisciplinary researchers, they will share their experience in navigating disciplinary boundaries between humanities and social science (e.g. gerontology). The panelists are dedicated to reimagining the decline model of age, leading to actual changes in conceiving the aging process or older individuals as burdens to society, especially after witnessing the suffering and deaths among older adults during the COVID-19 crisis.
As one contributor to the 2022 forum “Contested Language” in Age, Culture, Humanities, Dr. June Oh will present a critical reflection on interdisciplinary language in age/aging studies. The forum is built upon the 2021 North American Network in Aging Studies (NANAS) symposium themed “Contested Language,” which brings a critical eye to oversimplified categorizations like “the elderly.” Reflecting on her publishing experience in one of the prestigious gerontology journals, The Gerontologist (Oxford UP), she will examine how we speak in interdisciplinary language to a larger and diverse audience in age studies. Oh’s presentation will illuminate not only the flexibility of age critics in communicating across disciplines but also the unique contribution of literary scholars in contesting language to shape broader images of age identities.
Dr Jade French will explore some of the strategies that can be used to position work on ageing in modernism through three terms: ‘late life’, ‘late style’ and ‘late modernism’. She will discuss how useful the critical term ‘late’ is in relation to ageing studies in modernism. To end, she will reflect on working as a research fellow on the project ‘Reimagining the Future in Older Age’, which led a series of intergenerational reading groups to better understand attitudes towards ageing and future time. Twentieth-century texts with experimental form, like Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book (1972), underpinned discussions on age expectations throughout the life course. Overall, the paper will question how researchers might use literary methods and modernist texts in applied settings to nuance understandings of lateness, ageing and intergenerational relationships.
Roya Liu will share how her pedagogy integrates age perspectives into humanities-oriented undergraduate courses. Liu designed a 100-level English course titled “Intergenerational Dialogue: Modernism and Contemporary Literature, ” which stages a metaphoric intergenerational dialogue that brings together texts and media of different times: the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This class is designed to raise students’ awareness of the significance of intergenerational dialogue/collaboration in the global landscape, inspired by a 2023 article in UN Today that champions the bringing together of individuals of different age groups. She will critically analyze her intergenerational comparisons experimented within the class, comparing ideas, themes, and literary techniques across works from different generations and cultures. Liu will also reflect on the impact of this intergenerational method, highlighting how it enhances students’ understanding of using “old” literature to inform contemporary discourse and their ability to address texts within specific historical and cultural contexts.
Yaqian Xu is going to explore the “visibility” of the ageing body in contemporary media and narrative forms and discuss how the ageing body in contemporary discourses shapes and challenges the binary of successful/failed aging. This discussion constitutes part of her advocate for the necessity of a “bodily turn” in aging studies—to openly discuss the ageing body as a crucial part of age identities in later life. And it also constitutes the negotiation of the conceptualization of the ageing body, a concept with great potential in initiating interdisciplinary efforts in humanities, at a time when the social construction of the body itself is increasingly drawing scholarly attention.
Each panelist presents for 12 minutes, followed by a 3-minute response from Andrea Charise. Then, a 15-minute Q&A session follows.