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Graphic by Steven D. Warner, Graphics Designer Drawing of face by Aaron Sinift, Iowa City, Iowa |
July 19-30, 1999
Directors
Teresa Mangum, English Department and the Aging Studies Program, University of Iowa
Kitty Buckwalter, Gerontology/Nursing/Health Sciences, The University of Iowa
While aging is often defined by changes in the body, individuals interpret those changes in response to metaphors, images, the implications of scientific discoveries, television shows, the language of health care providers, advertising, and the expressions on others' faces -- all of which contribute to the cultural construction of aging and old age. This seminar will bring together interdisciplinary participants to investigate how assumptions about aging affect the types of research, scholarship, and works of art produced in particular disciplines. Participants will explore ways in which interdisciplinary collaboration might lead to ground-breaking questions, methods, and contributions to the study of aging.
The seminar will focus on the original research and creative work of participants. Workshops devoted to participants' presentations will be supplemented by discussions of theoretical studies that address representations of aging in the basic sciences, medicine, social sciences, the humanities, the arts, film, and popular culture. The seminar will also feature distinguished lecturers from medicine, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts.
Applicants from the basic and applied sciences, the humanities, the social sciences, health care delivery, law, architecture, and the arts are welcome. Our objective is to bring together interdisciplinary scholars, researchers, and artists in a dynamic interchange of approaches to the topic of aging.
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| Denita Gadson and Don Coffman |
We encourage participants to consider wide-ranging questions. How do gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, class, and other identities affect representations of aging? Who is defined as "old," when, and why in different disciplines? How are concepts such as "normal" or "natural" deployed in discussions of prolonged life in the different fields of study? How do biological and medical research -- from computer imaging to hormone replacement therapy to the development of Viagra to Alzheimer's research -- affect conceptions of aging? Why does the subject of elderly eroticism so seldom surface? Who remains "ageless"? Where and how do metaphors that foster ageism seep into "objective" accounts of aging in medicine and the sciences? Conversely, how do medical language, folk lore, or psychological language circulate in the arts and popular culture that concentrate on aging? How do the oppositions used to characterize old age -- particularly the defining of old as simply not young -- stymie potential reconceptualizations of late life?
 David Troyansky |
Obermann Fellows
Anne Davis Basting, Assistant Professor, Theatre Studies/English, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh - Don D. Coffman, Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Iowa - A. Denita Gadson, Researcher, Iowa City - Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Lecturer, Radcliffe Seminars, Radcliffe College - Dorothy Holland, Assistant Professor, Theatre, University of Richmond - Martha Holstein, Research Scholar, The Park Ridge Center for Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics, Chicago, IL - Christopher King, Researcher, Centre for the Body and Society, Deakin University, Australia - Michelle Massé, Associate Professor, English, Louisiana State University - Carolyn Morell, Associate Professor, Social Work, Niagara University - Ruth E. Ray, Associate Professor, English, Wayne State University - David G. Troyansky, Associate Professor, History, Texas Tech University - Thomas Walz, Professor, Social Work, The University of Iowa
Visiting Speakers
Gene Cohen, Director of the Center on Aging, Health, and Humanities and Professor of Health Care Sciences/Psychiatry, George Washington University - Jaber F. Gubrium, Professor, Sociology, University of Florida - Stephen Katz, Professor, Sociology, Trent University, Canada - Kathleen Woodward, Professor of English and Director of the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee - May L. Wykle, Florence Cellar Professor and Associate Dean for Community Affairs, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University
Supported by the C. Esco and Avalon L. Obermann Fund and by the following University of Iowa organizations: the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the Center on Aging, the Geriatric Education Center, the Aging Studies Program, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Graduate College. Also sponsored by: Office of the Provost, Adult and Gerontological Area of the College of Nursing, Institute for Cinema and Culture, Department of Psychiatry in College of Medicine, Department of English, Stanley-UI Support Organization, and the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities.