Abstract submission deadline 1 December 2014. Conference at Miami
University, Oxford, Ohio, 19-22 May 2015
The North American Network in Aging Studies (NANAS) was established in 2013
to bring together scholars and researchers from across a variety of
disciplines-humanities, arts, gerontology, anthropology, sociology, health
care, and others-interested in critical examinations of how age is
conceptualized, defined, experienced, performed, and critiqued. At this
inaugural research conference, we seek to build on the foundations of and
define new formations in this vital and growing field.
We invite scholarship and research that provides fresh insights into
changing manifestations and interpretations of age through engagement with
cultural texts (e.g., literature, history, media, public policy, adaptive
technology), as well as qualitative or other meaning-based approaches.
Presentations might investigate local and global implications of age and
aging; consider how diverse approaches to studying age can enable richer
understanding in traditional academic disciplines; develop new,
cross-disciplinary methodologies that expose the often-unacknowledged
effects of age relations and age assumptions; and/or examine ethical,
political, philosophical, or practical questions about what it means to be
humans living through time. Additional topics may include, but are not
limited to, the following:
* Intergenerational relations: philosophical, historical, literary
and/or gerontological insights
* Problematizing age: other ways to organize human life
* Memory and forgetting as personal and cultural phenomena
* Age narratives
* Creativity and imagination as a site of knowledge in old age
* Age and the environment; the meaning of space and place
* Hegemony of biological and non-biological models of aging
* Morality, spirituality and ethics as mediated by age
* Age across cultural, regional, or historical differences
* Gerontology meets age studies: crossroads of science and meaning
* Age and the body
* Age across cultural, regional, or historical differences
* Gerontological literacy and illiteracy
* Beyond the young/old binary
* Disciplinary challenges in an interdisciplinary field
* Age and personal objects
* Age, technology, and new media
* Illustrating, dramatizing, choreographing, composing, and/or
performing age
* Defining age through public policy
* Age across cultural, regional, or historical differences
* Geography, politics, economics, and the lived experience of aging
* Age in the classroom
* Age and sexuality
* Age and identity
* Age-based roles in celebrations, ceremonies, and/or other public
events.
* Age and dis/ability
* Imagining age
* Age, nation, development: postcolonial paradigms
Keynote speakers:
* Jaber Gubrium, Chair, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology,
University of Missouri
* Ros Jennings, Head of Postgraduate Research, Director of the Centre for
Women, Ageing and Media (WAM) and Reader in Cultural Studies at the
University of Gloucestershire
* Teresa Mangum, Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies;
Professor, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of Iowa
Conveners: Kate de Medeiros, Miami University; Erin Lamb, Hiram College;
Leni Marshall, University of Wisconsin-Stout; and Cynthia Port, Coastal
Carolina University.
Proposal abstracts for individual papers and themed sessions/symposia are
welcome. Each person may participate in a maximum of two sessions.
Proposal abstracts for individual papers should include the title of the
paper, an abstract of 250 words, and contact details.
Proposal abstracts for themed sessions/symposia of up to 4 presentations
should include the title, an 800-word abstract that refers to each paper,
and contact details of the chair(s) and contributors. Researchers and
scholars in all stages of their careers are welcome to submit proposals.
Proposals will be accepted until December 1, 2014. Please send abstracts to
demedekb@miamiOH.edu <mailto:demedekb@miamiOH.edu> .
If you have any questions or would like additional information, please
contact demedekb@miamiOH.edu <mailto:demedekb@miamiOH.edu> . Additional
conference details can be found at www.agingstudies.org
<http://www.agingstudies.org> .
Leni Marshall, Ph.D.
Department of English and Philosophy
University of Wisconsin – Stout
318 Callahan Hall
Menomonie, WI 54751
marshallel@uwstout.edu <mailto:marshallel@uwstout.edu>