According to the World Health Organization, more than 55 million people currently live with dementia worldwide. This number is projected to double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030. Mainstream media have increasingly framed Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and other forms of dementia as a public health crisis and threat to the economy. Historian Jesse Ballenger traces how the notion of losing one’s memory and attendant stereotypes of senility are often narrated as a fate worse than death. This session proposed by the Age Studies forum intervenes in these conversations about dementia by exploring alternative ways of imagining aging and memory loss beyond a negative, deficit framework. How might dementia reconfigure dominant understandings of the self as singular, stable, and coherent? Rather than a loss of selfhood, can we rethink dementia as the formation of multiple, new selves? What possibilities might an aging population with memory loss offer for theorizing new models of community and care?

The panelists explore the complex intersection of aging and memory loss across different forms including digital media, literature, podcasts, and film. These diverse approaches will appeal to a broad audience. This panel brings together scholars from different career stages, from graduate student to full professor. Each participant will be limited to a 12-minute presentation, leaving ample time for Q&A.

The panel open with Bonnie Cross’s examination of the representation of AD in what she calls “neuronarratives”—works that centralize the brain or consciousness in the plot. Through an engagement with neurogames, neurocomics, and neuromemoirs, Cross demonstrates how these modalities challenge the traditional view of AD as a loss of selfhood. Cross elaborates how these neuronarratives feature an active process of self-creation, where the fragmented self is understood as multiple selves in conversation with each other. Produced by AD patients and caregivers, these works also reclaim agency for members of these communities. Cross’s presentation not only broadens our understanding of AD but also models an expansive approach to considering the affordances and limitations of AD representation across digital and print mediums.

Next, Laura Kremmel turns to gothic literature and observes how dementia has been historically associated with the monstrous and the uncanny, adding another layer of dehumanization and stigmatization to already marginalized characters. These representations typically align audience sympathy with family members and caregivers, further casting dementia patients as a burden. Kremmel argues that two contemporary texts, The Manor and Iain Reid’s We Spread, advance a critique of ageism by emphasizing the possibilities of the dementia community. These works shift focus from fear of people with dementia to the fears felt by those living with dementia. By normalizing the process of aging into/with memory loss, these new gothic narratives prompt us to rethink dementia as a basis for theorizing alternative structures and ethics of social relation.

Roya Liu expands this notion of the dementia community through a transnational and multimedia approach. Liu’s presentation explores the rise of Chinese films that focus on caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s and podcasting as a platform to broaden discussion about aging and memory loss beyond alarmist views of dementia in terms of burden and decline. Rather than framing the elderly solely as recipients of care, the 2022 films, Mother! and The Cord of Life, present elderly figures as caretakers of younger people with dementia and consider the displacement of elders as an effect of urbanization. Liu’s use of podcasts to discuss these films underscores the power of digital media in reshaping societal attitudes about aging and dementia and facilitating cultural sensitivity and exchange.

Yaqian Xu continues to investigate alternative dementia narratives by engaging with Still Alice, one of the few contemporary American novels addressing early-onset Alzheimer’s, and its film adaptation. Applying Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray’s theories, Xu adopts a phenomenological approach to exploring the experience of memory loss. Challenging the dominant discourse that equates memory loss to the loss of identity, Xu demonstrates how Alice’s embodied relationality—her capacity to feel, interact, and engage with the world around her—remains intact, providing a form of continuity in her relationship with family and community. Xu’s presentation contributes to feminist care ethics and aging studies by highlighting the embodied and relational dimensions of identity even in the face of Alzheimer’s.

Together, these presentations bring a range of methodologies and perspectives to how aging and memory loss are represented and experienced. Through literary analysis, digital media, and cultural critique, the panel challenges stigmatizing narratives associated with aging and dementia, offering new ways to understand these experiences as dynamic and multifaceted.