Aging in the Americas
A new focus group entitled “Aging in the Americas” will be created and it will be made available here. Questions of aging and demographic change as well as issues of care-giving and nursing care dependency have recently become central concerns in Europe and the Americas. The goal of this focus group is to provide a conceptual and accessible framework for interdisciplinary research in the field of Age Studies. Taking an Inter-American comparative perspective, this focus group aims to look at cultural representations and scripts of age, aging, and old age, analyzing how the diverse culturally constructed characteristics of old age reflect the social, political and cultural legacies and practices in different countries and other groups of people in the Americas. A crucial aim of the focus group will be the contribution to the impact that the developing field of Age Studies directly has on the political, social and cultural circumstances that have to do with age-related policies in the Americas.
A publication in a peer-reviewed journal on the topic of “Aging in the Americas” is planned for 2020. Additionally, resources, course material, and links to other useful networks will be available here soon.
The initiators of this focus group are …
Ulla Kriebernegg, chair of ENAS (European Network in Aging Studies) and specialist in Aging Studies. Together with Sally Chivers, she is the co-editor of Care Home Stories: Aging, Disability, and Long-Term Residential Care (2017). As treasurer of the International Association of Inter-American Studies, she has a great influence on the success of the IAS and she has a deep insight into inter-American topics.
Saskia Hertlein is a specialist in the field of emerging adulthood in U.S. American literature and an active long-term member of the International Association of Inter-American Studies. Her book Tales of Transformation: Emerging Adulthood, Migration, and Ethnicity in Contemporary American Literature (2014) was published in the Inter-American Studies / Estudios Americanos book series.
If you are interested in collaborating with the initiators and becoming a member of this focus group, please contact Ulla Kriebernegg (ulla.kriebernegg@uni-graz.at) and Saskia Hertlein (Saskia.Hertlein@uni-due.de).
