Seminar

Invited Keynote

George Rousseau

Joys and Sorrows of the ageing Clara Schumann: Senescence and Late Style

When Robert Schumann committed suicide in 1856 at 46, he left Clara with eight young children. She was now a single mother whose concert career extended to dozens of far-flung concerts each year and who needed to provide financially for her family. Reviews of her concerts often acclaimed her as the greatest female pianist in Europe. Brahms – 14 years younger than Clara who had become close to the Schumanns while Robert was alive  – fell madly in love with Clara, yet their intimacy was no ordinary matter. The ageing Clara relied on Brahms for musical and financial assistance but could not love him as he did her. Instead, Clara burned the candle of her dead husband for four decades until her own death in 1896 at almost eighty. How did she manage? Why was she unable to live with or without Brahms? What was Clara like in old age? How did she grieve? What sustained her to the end? What were her last years like? And her musical compositions? And the eight children? This talk aims to answer these questions by probing the ménage-à-trois as it relates to Clara’s senescence.

George Rousseau is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society based at the University of Oxford and the recipient of honorary degrees honoris causa. He has been a Professor at UCLA, Regius Professor at King’s College Aberdeen, and was the Founding Co-Director of Oxford University’s Centre for the History of Childhood. Among Rousseau’s books is a trilogy about Enlightenment culture (1991) – Enlightenment Borders, Enlightenment Crossings, and Perilous Enlightenment; This Long Disease, my Life: Alexander Pope and the Sciences (Princeton, 1968) written with Marjorie Hope Nicolson; The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought (California, 1990); Gout: The Patrician Malady (Yale, 1998, with Roy Porter); Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); as well as Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility (2004). His most recent book, Rachmaninoff’s Cape (London: Virtuoso) recently appeared in Russian translation. Professor Rousseau is a core member of the research project Historicizing the ageing self https://www.uib.no/en/project/ageing

Invited Keynote

Beatrice Allegranti

Moving Kinship with the More-Than-Human 

This presentation introduces Moving Kinship: feminist choreographic and dance movement psychotherapy practice, research and activism with people living with rare young onset dementia, their families, and the artistic team Beatrice Allegranti Company. The project highlights the experience of loss and grief, not as ‘lack’ but as an embodied-relational process: loss is visceral and not something that we ‘do’ alone. By presenting Moving Kinship, I discuss the ethics and politics of entanglement and its implications for dementia: we are not bounded self-contained fully formed humans but porous processes - enfolding within a complex network of body politics, language, affect, tactile-kinaesthetic relating, environments, technologies, and power structures. As such, my proposition is a more-than-human view of dementia that tangles with, and disrupts wider social, political, and cultural inequalities of age, loss, voice/language, memory, intimacy, vulnerability, and care. This presentation will precede the digital performance of I’ve Lost You Only To Discover That I Have Gone Missing, an internationally touring dance theatre production directly informed by the tangled experiences of people affected by young onset dementia, and the artistic team Beatrice Allegranti Company.  

Dr. Beatrice Allegranti is Reader in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and Choreography (University of Roehampton), an independent choreographer and UKCP registered dance movement psychotherapist. Beatrice’s choreography and film work has toured internationally (France, U.S.A, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland) and her clinical experience includes private practice and the NHS (adult mental health and dementia services) and consultancy (Arts For Peace, Irish Defense Forces, Wellcome). Across her artistic, clinical and scholarly work, Beatrice’s embodied feminist focus involves an ethical re-visioning of the way we relate with/in the world through the lens of our intersectional body politics (gender, race, sexuality, age, class, mental health, environment). Beatrice Allegranti works with Professor Jill Halstead (Fakultet for kunst, musikk og design, UiB).

Invited Keynote

David Troyansky

History and Ageing: Authority, Marginalization, and Celebration

The talk will offer reflections on writing the history of old age--particularly the social and cultural history of late life since the eighteenth century--during a pandemic that targets and sometimes offers occasion to celebrate older people’s lives.  It will explore the circumstances in which the aged have been visible or central and those when they have been invisible or marginalized.  It will use the French Revolutionary Festival of Old Age and early formulas for the granting of retirement pensions as points of departure for understanding late life in an era of rapid change.

David Troyansky is Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  He works primarily on the history of France and the history of old age.  He is the author of Old Age in the Old Regime: Image and Experience in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989) and Aging in World History (New York and London: Routledge, 2016).  He is co-editor of Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009) and a six-volume Cultural History of Old Age to be published by Bloomsbury Press, and he has recently completed a book manuscript on career and the right to retirement in post-Revolutionary France.

Invited Keynote

Bridie Moore

Troubling Age Performances

Bridie Moores contribution outlines the work with Passages Theatre Group, the company formed, with performers over the age of 50, to support Bridie’s practice-as-research. This investigated the power of performance to trouble normative meanings that attach to the figure of the old person in performance. Some of the performances and methods that were developed as a response to age and other theory in the theatre studio will be explored. These include responses to Ann Davis Basting’s ‘depth model of age’ in which performance represents the aged body in its temporal depth (1998, pp. 140 – 143), and Anca Cristofovici’s analysis of the figure of the aged female nude in Jeff Wall’s The Giant (1994), which she describes as representing ‘significant form’ or ‘accomplished shape’ (1999: 275). Beverley Skegg’s (2004) insights into how value is inscribed onto the (aged) body has informed ways this might be disrupted in performance. The aim was always to accord the oldest body the most value. This session may offer an opportunity for practical exploration of exercises that emerged out of the research, which have been developed in other contexts beyond the PhD. These will of course be adapted to work online and will require no previous experience of performing. 

Bridie Moore has been researching the performance of age since starting her AHRC funded PhD project at The University of Sheffield in 2011. This included an element of practice-as-research and to facilitate this she formed ‘Passages Theatre’, a group for performers over the age of fifty https://www.facebook.com/passagestheatregroup/.  They have made and toured 4 shows since 2012: Life Acts (2013), A Blueprint For Ageing (2014) The Mirror Stage (2015) And You Need Hands (2016). They were also Theatre Company in Residence at the Theatre Delicatessen, Sheffield (2017 -19). She’s currently Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Huddersfield, researching/writing a book entitled Ageing Femininities for Routledge.

Seminar Recital

Sara Aimee Smiseth

Sara Aimee Smiseth is a pianist with a Master’s degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music and a Bachelor’s degree in musicology from University in Oslo. Since graduating in 2013, she has toured regularly playing a range of repertoire and is noted for her excellent piano playing and lecture-recitals. She has played solo concerts in a range of venues across Norway, as well as international concerts for large audiences in the US and Canada. She often works for the Norwegian Opera & Ballet as a pianist and presenter. www.sarasmiseth.com

Seminar Contribution

Hannah Zeilig and Julian West

Co-Creativity, Wellbeing and Dementia

The concept of wellbeing pervades contemporary life. However, a shared understanding and definitions of what it is, are elusive. Nonetheless, the imperative to improve wellbeing guides much public health and social policy and there has been increasing interest in exploring wellbeing for people with dementia in arts projects. Most discussions of wellbeing in relation to dementia start from a perspective that assumes absence or loss; this is something which we query. Our co-creative projects with people with dementia in both community settings and residential care homes have prompted us to take a more nuanced, fluid and dynamic approach to understanding the ubiquitous concept of wellbeing. This presentation explores the experiences of people with dementia and their partners who took part in With All, a co-creative arts project funded by Wellcome (2016-2018). Our presentation investigates how co-creativity can affect wellbeing from the perspective of people with dementia; and explores how wellbeing might be usefully reconsidered. We argue that wellbeing can be understood as an ongoing social practice rather than a completed state. In order to reconceptualise it we need to adopt a transdisciplinary approach, that includes knowledge from outside academia and from people with dementia.

Hannah Zeilig is a senior research fellow at University of Arts, London and research associate at University of East Anglia.

Julian West is a musician and Head of Open Academy at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he is an Honorary Fellow.

They have a shared interest in the role that creativity and the Arts might have in advancing understanding about dementia. They were invited to take up leadership roles in Created Out of Mind, recipients of Wellcome’s prestigious Hub Award from 2016-18. Here, they broke new ground in their exploration of co-creativity and the possibilities that might exist in adopting this approach when working with people living with dementia.

Seminar Contribution

Desmond O’Neill

Towards Interdisciplinary Scholarship Across Arts, Humanities and Gereotology

Appreciation of the vital contribution of the arts and humanities to the understanding of ageing has been a developing trend for nearly five decades within gerontology. A key challenge, paralleled in the medical and health humanities, has been how to develop a critical but collaborative nexus of scholarship within these fields of study. A deep reflection is needed on the differing cultures, approaches, methodologies and incentives/disincentives to joint working of the many disciplines involved, as well as teasing out the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary scholarship. A focus of study is the inclusion of humanities and arts in gerontology and geriatrics curricula by the Academy of Gerontology in Higher Education: study of its implementation is likely to be a potential source of valuable insights into developing joint working.

Desmond (Des) O’Neill is a Professor of Geriatric Medicine in Trinity College Dublin, active in medical humanities and cultural gerontology for several decades. He is Chair of the Humanities, Arts and Cultural Gerontology Advisory Panel of the Gerontological Society of America, and Chair of the Working Group on Medical and Health Humanities of the Irish Humanities Alliance.

Seminar Contribution

Eli Lea og Oddgeir Synnes

Cultural Citizenship for Persons with Dementia

The traditional concept of citizenship is linked to a rights discourse that emphasizes citizens' rights and duties in society. In such a perspective it may become increasingly difficult for persons with dementia to claim their rights and fulfill their obligations as full citizens as the illness progresses. In dementia research broader notions of citizenship have received increased attention to better understand how citizenship can be understood and practiced. Social and relational citizenship refer to how citizenship in relation to dementia must be understood as a social practice that is shaped and practiced in collaboration with others. In this presentation, we will present the concept of “cultural citizenship” as an expanded notion of citizenship in relation to dementia. We will highlight how inclusive, collaborative art practices can strengthen persons with dementia's cultural citizenship by discussing two art programmes; dementia friendly guided tours at KODE art museum and poetry writing project at a day care centre for persons with dementia.  

Eli Lea MA, PhD.  Artist and independent researcher. Lea’s PhD thesis was a case study of a participatory art programme at an art museum tailored at persons with dementia. Lea has been working with participatory art projects in various settings for many years. Her practice and research concerns collaborative and participatory methodologies, ethics of representation and citizenship. 

Oddgeir Synnes MA, PhD is associate professor at VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway and associate professor at Molde University College, Norway. Synnes has a background in literature and the humanities, and has worked for many years with creative writing and narrative practices in elderly care, dementia care and in palliative care. Synnes’ main research interests are in narrative medicine, medical humanities and existential care. 

Seminar Contribution

Anna-Christina Kainradl

Intersections of Migration and Old Age: Ethical Theories and Intersectional Discrimination

Austria is home to a significant number of old people who came as immigrant “guest workers” in the 1970s. They are a rapidly growing, heterogeneous population group in which different factors of migration interact in a complex manner. Questions of access and use of health services as well as immigrants’ health decisions reflect ethical issues of justice. Intersectional discrimination can prevent older migrants from expressing their own value preferences, their images of good life, or from using them for health decisions. Ethical theories reflect and structure decision-making processes and influence medical and clinical health decisions in the form of ethical advice structures and guidelines. To what extent these ethical theories are sensitive to forms of intersectional discrimination will be examined by using the example of Principle Ethics of Beauchamp and Childress.

Mag. Anna-Christina Kainradl, MA is a doctoral candidate at the University of Graz. Her dissertation research focuses on old age and migration in Austria. She also teaches Medical Ethics at the Medical University Graz and is involved in projects dealing with age, autonomy, knowledge and health literacy. She is currently working for the research network “Heterogenität und Kohäsion” (Heterogeneity and Cohesion) and at the “Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care (CIRAC)”.

Seminar Contribution

Ulla Kriebernegg

Rewriting the Last Pages of the Last Chapter: Celebrating Life in Long-Term Residential Care

In this paper, I will discuss the newly developing genre of “care home narratives” and explore the power of fictional texts and films that deal with living and aging in institutions of long-term care – places where the “last pages” of the “last chapter” are often set. Even though some fictional narratives reaffirm negative assumptions of what it means to grow old in a care home, others challenge them openly and can be interpreted as celebratory narratives of agency even in oldest age. Discussing the celebration of individual resistance and agency portrayed in many care home stories, I will focus on the Canadian short film Rhonda’s Party (2010) which broaches the topic of friendship and death, showing that even in oldest age, the last chapter can be rewritten.

Ulla Kriebernegg is director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care and Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz. Her emphasis in research and teaching are North American literary and cultural studies, Age/aging studies, and Medical Humanities. Her latest book, Putting Age in its Place (forthcoming) focuses on cultural representations of care homes in North American film and fiction. Ulla is the chair of the Age and Care Research Group Graz and deputy chair of the European Network of Aging Studies (ENAS). She co-edits the Aging Studies book series (Transcript) and has won several teaching and research awards.

Seminar Contribution

Katharina Zwanzger

“Last Chapters in the Book of Life”: A Linguistic Analysis of Life Stories of Residents of a Nursing Home.

Life stories yield intriguing information about different facets of aging, which can be viewed as a life-long process. Listening to the stories of individuals who live in institutional care settings provides an opportunity to access meaningful accounts of personal experiences whose analysis may allow for an individualized and more compassionate approach to ageing. This paper presents preliminary findings of a study based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with residents of an Irish nursing home exploring various elements of personal narratives. The study is part of a larger PhD project that explores the representation of social events and social actors among other aspects of the residents’ stories.

Katharina Zwanzger is a research assistant at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care (https://cirac.uni-graz.at/en/) and received her Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She participated in the ERASMUS programme at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland and is the recipient of the “Excellence in English and American Studies Award 2015” for outstanding academic achievements at the University of Graz.

Seminar Contribution

Eva-Maria Trinkaus

The “Literary Foodscape” in Ladies Lunch: Lore Segal’s Perspective on Age/ing

In her short story “Ladies’ Lunch,” published in The New Yorker, the US-Austrian author Lore Segal addresses what it takes to live comfortably in old age. Ladies’ Lunch is an account of an older woman, Lotte, and her friends who meet for lunch on a regular basis. When Lotte, however, does not want to put up with her caretaker anymore and her son gets frustrated with her wish to keep eating what he considers unhealthy for her, Lotte gets sent to a nursing home. However, not only Lotte’s life is affected by this transition. This paper is going to analyze the literary foodscape as a safe space for interaction and agency, and explores the potential of providing a tool to look at age/ing in literature.

Eva-Maria Trinkaus is a doctoral student of American Literary Studies and Critical Age Studies at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, Austria, researching American Literature with a focus on food, age, and place. She is a member of the Age and Care Research Group Graz and has been an executive board member of the European Network in Aging Studies (ENAS) since 2019.

Seminar Contribution

Jorunn S. Gjerden

The ageing self in Nathalie Sarraute’s Here (1995)

Although predominately a pioneer of the nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999) also remains a writer associated with old age. Sarraute wrote the major part of her experimental literary work from her sixties onwards, publishing her last text at the age of 97. Her literature also frequently depicts ageing, but often in a depreciative way. The first three novels in particular stage anxiety-ridden elderly main characters frenetically striving to keep death at a distance. Against the backdrop of an analysis of subjectivity in Sarraute’s oeuvre, I will however propose an alternative interpretation of the representation of ageing in her later writing, epitomised by the evocation of the renaissance painter Arcimboldo in Here (1995). Narratively and thematically, this collection of short texts depicts the ageing self as constituted by the very processes that seem to threaten and negate self-identity, thus mirroring the way in which Arcimboldo’s composite heads simultaneously and paradoxically appear and disappear in an exuberant overflow of flowers, fruits, and incongruous objects. Drawing on Judith Butler’s recent work, I will argue that Here partakes in a broader exploration of the self as constituted by vulnerability, dependency, and exposure, while at the same time associating the precarious ageing self with intense experiences of an emerging fullness of life itself.

Jorunn S. Gjerden (dr.art.), Associate Professor of French literature at the University of Bergen, has published several articles, an edited volume and a monograph on ethics and aesthetics, modernist literature, performativity, and postcolonialism.

Seminar Contribution

Theresa Hartinger

Contemporary Austrian Literature on Age/ing

Age and aging are essential topoi that have long been the subject of literary studies and focus on various facets of the phenomenon. On the one hand, literature and culture reflect the current discourses of old age in a society at a particular time, but on the other hand they also create narrative and media stagings, which, as a result contribute to a discursive idea of old age. In contemporary Austrian literature, the subject of old age is frequently picked up and viewed from various perspectives. By comparing and dealing with different literary works, a more complex approach to old age in literature can be generated. In my presentation, I would like to give a brief insight into how diversely aging can be represented.

Teresa Hartinger is a doctoral student of German Studies at the University of Graz, Austria and a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care. She is currently working in the “App-solute News” research project. She graduated from the University of Graz as a teacher in German and History (Mag.) and she taught German as a second language at several schools during and after her studies (2016-2020). In her dissertation she deals with contemporary Austrian literature and examines it from the perspective of aging.

Seminar Contribution

Urša Marinšek

A Look at Eugene O’Hare’s Sydney and the Old Girl

Eugene O’Hare’s protagonist in the play Sydney and the Old Girl (2019), Nell Stock, is a Londoner in her seventies. Nell is in a wheelchair and requires help with everyday tasks; she seems helpless being immobile and dependent on other people. Sydney, Nell’s son, resides with her. He is not really helpful, but rather a ranting, resentful, and unhappy person who is only waiting to get rid of his mother. By all means, he shows it on a daily basis. He is not shy in his observations that his mother is aging, and Nell herself is aware that her body is changing. Aging in Eugene O’Hare’s drama is not the main theme, but it is tied to Sydney’s concern over inheritance and the fact that everything is changing, especially his mother’s condition. This paper aims at looking at representations of aging and old age in O’Hare’s play.

Urša Marinšek holds BAs in English Language and Literature and Sociology, and an MA in English from the University of Maribor, Slovenia. Her research interests include Slovene translations of Shakespeare’s plays, stylistics, drama, as well as aging studies. She is a member of the Age and Care Research Group Graz, and works at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, Austria.

Seminar Contribution

Eli Lea

Power-Sharing in a Co-Creative Practice Involving a Person with Dementia

Participative art projects where professional artist work with non-professional artist have flourished in the dementia field in the last decade. Recently the term “co-creativity” has been described as a particular approach to participatory art practice. There is no agreed upon definition of what the term “co-creativity” refers to, but researcher Hannah Zeilig and colleagues find that co-creative practices involving persons with dementia are non-hierarchical, cohesive processes, which are characterized by shared ownership, inclusivity, reciprocity and relationality. In this talk I will describe and discuss a case study that explores the power-sharing dynamics in a co-creative practice involving a person with dementia. I will present a 12 months long co-creation between myself and a man with dementia living in a nursing home. The work comprises numerous collaborative drawings. The overall aim of the study was to gain new knowledge about participatory art practices involving persons with dementia that can deepen our understanding about the mechanisms of the creative collaboration that are at the core of these practices.

Eli Lea MA, PhD.  Artist and independent researcher. Eli’s PhD thesis was a case study of a participatory art programme at an art museum tailored at persons with dementia. Eli has been working with participatory art projects in various settings for many years. Her practice and research concerns collaborative and participatory methodologies, ethics of representation and citizenship. 

Seminar Contribution

Vivian Joseph

They Lived Happily Ever After.

“And they lived happily ever after”. We associate these words with the end of fairy tales. Evil has been vanquished, and the worthy survivors can look forward to what sounds like an eternity of happiness. In the world we inhabit, over the last year, the direct and indirect effects of a virus, and responses to it, have taken the lives of many who would otherwise have lived. The elderly have been hardest hit. Ageing, which always concentrates concerns about health, has been particularly identified with vulnerability. In this talk I look at ageing in the fantasy worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin. What if becoming older did not bring concerns about health, or the approach of an end to life? Future advances in technology and medicine may take us further in that direction, so it is worth thinking about what those sorts of changes might mean. I also consider ways in which the vulnerability of old age can be seen in a positive light.

Vivan Joseph’s background is in philosophy, with a focus on philosophy of psychology, but his teaching and research at the University of Warwick include a range of philosophically-related topics, many in the medical humanities.

Seminar Contribution

Christina Colmena

The archive as a substitute for living: Late life in Moreira Salles’ film Santiago

In his later years, retired in a small apartment in Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, the former butler of a wealthy Brazilian family, remembers his life in front of the camera of the filmmaker Joao Moreira Salles, his former employer’s son. The relationship that Santiago and Moreira Salles establish during the shooting replicates the dynamics of power and subalternity that they had in the past but also reveals to Joao a hidden face of the servant: for years, Santiago typed feverishly a million pages with the accounts of the dynasties of the world, from Cleopatra to the Kennedys. The lives of others became then an alternative autobiography for him. This archive, the purpose of Santiago’s whole life, becomes also a place to seek some comfort in the face of old age and death. In my approach to this documentary, I’m using the concept of “unmaking” as a tool to explore these lives not completely “made”, and the resignation of being content just witnessing the lives of others, a question often related to class and subalternity. In my analysis I connect the archive with the narratives of life and death and the need of leaving a trace behind after we are gone.

Cristina Colmena holds a PhD in Spanish Literature (2019) and a MFA in Creative Writing (2012) both from New York University. She is also a writer, a playwright and a screenwriter.

Seminar Contribution

Olga V. Lehmann

“Humbled by Life”: Poetic Representations of Existential Pathways and Personal Life Philosophies Among Older Adults in Norway

In this article, we support the use of poetic representations to study experiential and existential meaning-making. We do so by presenting five spoken-word poems, which we created out of the transcriptions of 14 in-depth interviews with Norwegian older adults, prior to their enrollment in a biographical writing course. The poetic representations which have been named by themes from the transcript are (a) Where love takes us, (b) Relax during catastrophes, (c) Learning to see humankind as one common humanity, (d) Listen inward, (e) Life is, indeed, too short. Each poetic representation condenses diverse meanings and perspectives about life. They also maintain the anonymity of participants, as the plurality of their voices becomes one within the stanzas. While presenting this creative form of qualitative inquiry and providing some methodological reflections, we also discuss the implications of this approach for the theoretical development of the notions of personal life philosophies and existential pathways in cultural psychology.

Olga V. Lehmann, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Mental Health, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. She also leads the Health and Compassionate programs at Pracademy. She is a poetess, teacher, psychologist, and researcher interested in feelings and emotions, silence–phenomena, communication, poetic instants qualitative methods.

Svend Brinkmann is professor of psychology in the Department of Communication and Psychology at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. His research is particularly concerned with philosophical, moral, and methodological issues in psychology and other human and social sciences. In recent years, he has been studying the impact of psychiatric diagnoses on individuals and society and is now directing the research project The Culture of Grief.

Seminar Contribution

Peter Svare Valeur

The religion of old women

The talk looks at a short article by the poet Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978), a member of the Bloomsbury group, where she discusses what middle-aged and older women most immediately and intuitively believe in. To elaborate this topic, I will also look at Mirrlees’ own poetry which she wrote in older age, especially her poem “Et in Arcadia Ego”. As I show, the poems can be fruitfully seen in light of her intimate relationship while a student in Cambridge with the great scholar of ancient religion Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928). The relationship between the then 60 year old classicist and the young student - a relationship which led them to take several excursions on the continent, meeting people like Gertrude Stein, Anna de Noailles, Cocteau etc - is intriguingly reflected in Mirrlees' unjustly ignored later poetry. Also Harrison wrote about old age, particularly how it was viewed in Antiquity. It is interesting to compare the views on old age by the classical scholar Harrison and by the poet Mirrlees.

Peter Svare Valeur is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has published many articles on European Romanticism and Modernist poetry. He is a member of the research networks Historicizing the Aging Self, Christianity and Modernity, and Theories of compilation in the 18th century. His Ph.D. was titled Romantic Figures of Old Age. Readings of Chateaubriand, Eichendorff and Wordsworth (University of Oslo, 2013).

Seminar Contribution

Tia DeNora and Gary Ansdell

“Poems are made by fools like me”? gentle methods in scenes of care 

The Care for Music Project considers music in scenes of care in late and end of life, in the UK and Norway. One project aim is to develop further what we have come to call ‘gentle methods’ for recognising and capturing the micro-aesthetic features of musical interactions in scenes of care. To that end, we have been experimenting with ethnographic, poetic forms. In this presentation we will share some of our material and thinking about what poems can do in an otherwise explicitly research-oriented context. As a medium, we believe that ethnographic poetry – writing poems, reflexively considering the writing process and the poems’ claims, consideration of other people’s poems on ageing and care (for example, Philip Larkin’s, 1974 dementia poem, The Old Fools), and juxtaposing poetry with other written accounts of the research field –offers possibilities for sensitising us to metonymic processes within practices of music in care. Those processes in turn offer (for us) new perspectives and new methods for researching music and care.  

Tia DeNora is professor of Sociology of Music at the University of Exeter and Professor at The Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen. She is the principle investigator of the AHRC Project, Care for Music

Gary Ansdell is a music therapist,  Honorary Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Exeter University, and Professor, The Grieg Academy – Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen. He is co-investigator of the AHRC Project, Care for Music

https://careformusic212434243.wordpress.com

Seminar Contribution

Wolfgang Schmid

Last(ing) Music#2 – Sound, Gesture, and Silence at the End of Life and Beyond

As a music therapist and musician, I am genuinely interested in ecological practices of sound, gesture, and silence at the end of life and beyond. In my presentation, I will zoom in on examples of last(ing) music of dying persons and their families and friends. Following their traces of musicking, themes such as the celebration of life, the completion of relationships, and the question of what might end and what might last, emerge.

Wolfgang Schmid is Professor in Music Therapy at The Grieg Academy, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen. He is trained as musician at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and completed his music therapy studies at the University of Witten-Herdecke (Germany) in 1996. Wolfgang holds a part time position as music therapy practitioner at the Sunniva Senter for palliative care at Haraldsplass Deaconess Hospital in Bergen. He is co-researcher in the international project “Care for Music – An ethnography of music in late life and end of life settings” hosted by the University of Exeter (UK) and University of Bergen, and member of the Social Acoustic-research group at the University of Bergen.

Seminar Contribution

Inger Hilde Nordhus

Loneliness in Older Age from a Psychological Perspective: A Double-edged Sword

A common understanding of old age is that of spending a substantial amount of time alone. Findings from numerous studies suggest that individuals report less positive and more negative affect when alone as compared to when in the presence of other people. Momentary solitude, characterized by the absence of social interaction at a certain moment of time, has been associated with less positive affect but not more negative affect in older age groups as compared to middle aged and younger adults. Such findings are in line with the idea that affective experiences during solitude may differ across the adult lifespan and that momentary solitude might be experienced more favorably in old age. This presentation will focus on loneliness as a useful construct to examine the importance of social relations for health and well-being across the lifespan. Momentary solitude may also offer opportunities for emotional renewal and self-reflection. Finally, it is argued that we need a better understanding of naturally occurring variation in the perception of solitude, as opposed to a forced or undesirable withdrawal from others.

Inger Hilde Nordhus is professor of clinical geropsychology, at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen (UiB), and also professor (II) of behavioural medicine, at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo (UiO). She has for many years served as a research dean at the Faculty of Psychology (UiB). Professor Nordhus has an international reputation in the area of geriatric mental health, particularly with her research on late-life anxiety disorders and sleep problems in old age.

Seminar Contribution

Margery Vibe Skagen

Montaigne and the Art of being Alone

Withdrawal from the company of others has always been regarded with ambivalence. Philosophers, physicians and Church Fathers have advised against solitude, because it was said to generate melancholia and to render the solitary more vulnerable to troubled thoughts and temptations. But both the vita contemplativa devoted to self-scrutiny and prayer, and the more secular literary otium devoted to reading and thinking, have been venerable institutions, especially recommended in late life. Today these forms of retreat are almost forgotten in a secular culture that valorizes visible achievements and active sociability. When national policies campaign to end loneliness, it is all the more important to revisit the virtues of chosen solitude. In his Essays, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) discusses with himself and his favourite classical authors, the challenges and rewards of being alone. Retiring to the tower room of his chateau with the sole company of his books, his aim was to devote his remaining years to “the study of himself”, and to the philosophical practice of learning to die. The Essays sometimes reflect loneliness and “the sorrows of old age”, but more often the pleasurable freedom of solitude. This paper examines the art of solitude from the viewpoint of Montaigne. What might be the relevance of Montaigne's ideal of self-sufficiency for lonely individuals of our day?

Margery Vibe Skagen is Associate Professor in French Literature at the University of Bergen. She has published extensively on Baudelaire and the relationship between literature and psychiatry in the 19th century and has co-edited several anthologies in the fields of Literature and Science and Literature and Ageing. Since 2016, she is leader of the research project Historicizing the Ageing Self: Literature, Medicine, Psychology, Law.  

Seminar Contribution

Sharon Ost Mor

The Gifts of Positive Solitude: COVID 19 Pandemic Impact on Positive Solitude Experience of People Aged 65+

Positive solitude is the choice to be with oneself, while having a meaningful activity/ experience, which results in positive feeling. Although positive solitude is beneficial, the empiric literature about the phenomenon is scarce, and even more so when it comes to older adults' experience of positive solitude. Moreover, as far as we know, not much research deals with the way COVID-19 pandemic effects people's (over the age of 65) ability to experience positive solitude.  Can older adults continue their positive solitude experiences in times of continuous stress and social distancing? The current qualitative research (N=13, aged 65-84) deals with the COVID 19 pandemic impact on the positive solitude experience. Two themes emerged: Positive solitude is an anchor in times of crisis. 2. Positive solitude is re-chosen and meaningful as well as adaptive to crisis. First, positive solitudes' definition, paradigm and components will be presented.  Then, differences in positive solitude experience (between younger and older adults, between older adults and their caregivers) will be demonstrated. Finally, the results of the study will be presented and discussed.

Sharon Ost Mor is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Gerontology, in the University of Haifa, Israel. Completed with Honor her Masters of Health Administration (MHA) at the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa. Completed B.O.T. degree at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She serves as a geriatric Occupational Therapist in the northern region of Israel. Professor Yuval Palgi and Dr. Dikla Segel-Karpas, both from the Department of gerontology in the University of Haifa, are her supervisors.  

Seminar Contribution

Elizabeth Barry

One’s Own Company: Insights into Loneliness in Older Age in Modernist Literature

This paper will examine the modernist conception of art as inextricably linked to the condition of being alone, art being for Samuel Beckett “the apotheosis of solitude”, and the modernist novel for Woolf finding “its soliloquy in solitude”. It will connect this aloneness to older age, a condition central to the work of Beckett and prominent in several of Woolf’s novels. Growing older entails a necessary portion of loneliness there, even for Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway, who is often surrounded by people. The paper will look at the subjective costs and benefits of the condition of loneliness in older age as explored by these writers, who connect it with creativity and dignity as much as they offer a clear-sighted view of its drawbacks. The paper challenges the idea that loneliness in older age is an unqualified social ill, while also looking to literature for strategies to mitigate its more harmful effects. It will take Beckett’s prose works Malone Dies and Company, and his play Rockaby, as well as Woolf’s novels Mrs Dalloway and The Years as exemplars.

Elizabeth Barry is Reader in English at the University of Warwick, UK. She is the author of Beckett and Authority (Palgrave 2006), has edited issues of International Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Beckett Studies, and Journal of Medical Humanities, and has published several essays on literature and ageing. She is a partner on the interdisciplinary age studies project run by the University of Bergen, Historicizing the Ageing Self. She has also held two Arts and Humanities Research Council awards to work with doctors on using modernist literature to investigate disorders of self.

Seminar Contribution

Linn-Heidi Lunde

Are we living in the age of loneliness? On loneliness among older adults

Loneliness is a subjective and complex phenomenon that is part of being alive. Persistent loneliness is often defined as the discrepancy between a person's desired and achieved levels of social interaction. However, a person may feel lonely with others and in a crowd. On the contrary, a person can be alone or isolated without feeling lonely. For some people loneliness is experienced as highly aversive. Thus, it is a risk factor for health problems and impaired quality of life. It is a widespread belief that loneliness is prevalent in modern individualistic societies, in particular among older adults. In general, aging is associated with greater levels of emotional stability and the ability to tolerate loneliness. It has been argued that aging means becoming more selective and less interested in superficial social contacts. For many, old age is a time of contemplation where the need to experience solitude becomes greater. Contemplation in old age is about reflecting on one's life and the big questions, expanding the perspective and feeling part of a larger whole. The purpose of this presentation is to shed light on and challenge the commonly held age stereotype about loneliness among older adults and to present a more nuanced perspective.

Linn-Heidi Lunde, Clinical Geropsychologist/Phd/ Associate professor at Haukeland University Hospital/University of Bergen

Seminar Contribution

Marlene Goldman

Torching the Dusties: “It’s our turn.”

Protestors have appeared outside the gates of Ambrosia Manor. From behind strange baby-faced masks, they issue a chillingly simple demand: it’s time for the residents of this posh retirement home to give up their space on earth. Trapped inside as the situation worsens, Frank and Wilma struggle to respond. Despite Frank’s failing vision the two must hatch a plan to escape before Ambrosia Manor goes up in flames. Based on the short story of the same name by Margaret Atwood, “Torching the Dusties” dramatizes issues arising from ageism, age-related macular degeneration, and Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Starring Eric Peterson and Clare Coulter, the film marks the second collaboration by writing and directing team Marlene Goldman and Philip McKee. “Torching the Dusties” was produced in partnership with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and York University’s Centre for Research on Vision. The film remains accessible to people with vision loss through the use of audio-description, and specialized screenings are available for clinicians and caregivers. Through immersive camerawork and well-drawn central characters, the project aims to lessen stigma, increase patient engagement, and raise awareness of issues surrounding age-related vision loss and Charles Bonnet Syndrome.

Marlene Goldman is a writer, filmmaker, and English professor at the University of Toronto. Her most recent work examines the connection between shame and stigma, specifically as relates to age. Exploring her subject through the lenses of literature, film, street art, and technology, Dr. Goldman seeks to re- imagine marginalized identities while translating her research into accessible narrative forms.

Seminar Contribution

Emanuela Ettorre

An Act of (Literary) Resistance: Life, Labour, and Old Age in Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period 

In Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period (1881-2), a future dystopia solves the ‘problem’ of the elderly by euthanizing everyone who reaches the age of 67, since by then a man has done ‘all that he is fit to do’ and is now an ‘intolerable burden’. Trollope’s unusual novel – his only foray into speculative fiction – joins a tradition of literary speculation about how best to deal with the elderly that extends back to plays like The Old Law (1656) and forwards to stories like Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky (1950), Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970), and to the wave of environmentalist concern about rising population numbers, (in)famously set out in Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968). In the novel, Trollope rejects the argument that the elderly necessarily constitute a problem for society; its interest lies in the act of literary resistance that it represents, in the counter-arguments it articulates, and in the example that it embodies, of a writer who was himself then considered elderly (he wrote this novel at 67), experimenting with a new form of fiction, and engaging afresh with controversial ideas in the supposed twilight of his life. 

Emanuela Ettorre is Associate Professor of English at “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara. She has published on Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, Mary Kingsley, Charles Darwin, animal studies, women travel writing and the relationship between science and literature.  

Seminar Contribution

Soledad Marambio

Aurora Venturini and Her “Old Bitches”: Abject Representations of Old Age as Metaphor of a Falling Country

Argentinian writer Aurora Venturini became a literary sensation when, at the age of 85, she won an important prize for emerging writers. From then on, her previous work –she had been writing and publishing in small imprints for decades– was re issued. Her work is populated with monstrous characters and cruelty and rage are common features in her texts. In this work, I analyse representations of old age in one of her novels (Nosotros, Los Caserta) and in one short story (“Las Vélez”). The words that Venturini uses in both texts to talk about old age situate this stage of life in the field of decay, the abject. Thus, with a careful choice of atrocious terms, the author creates a decomposing old age, a process of physical and moral corruption that, I argue, she uses to make a metaphor of an Argentina and a social class –the oligarchy– that devour themselves. I maintain that, in these texts, Venturini’s punishing gaze is especially focused on the female characters –the “old bitches”– confirming what many scholars writing about age, like Beauvoir, Segal, Sontag or Woodward, have said: that women's ageing is punished harder by society.

Soledad Marambio is a Chilean poet and translator. Her work has appeared in Granta, Birmingham Poetry Review and Words Without Borders among others. She has a PhD. in Latin American, Latino and Iberian Cultures and is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergen's Aging Project. Her forthcoming book Sujetos del deseo: una exploración de la traducción amateur will be published in October, 2021, by De Gruyter.

Seminar Contribution

Adrian Tait

Towards an (eco)critical approach to aging and sustainability: the self-aware society of William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890)

First published in 1890, William Morris’s utopian romance, News from Nowhere, is best known for its portrayal of an agrarian anarcho-socialist alternate to the industrial capitalism of late-Victorian Britain. In the garden-like world of this post-revolutionary society, people work by hand, live in close contact with their environment, and balance out their demands on the natural world. Yet this is also a society in which, by virtue of the healthy environment it has cultivated, people live into great old age. How, then, have the citizens of this future world avoided the problem of over-population, and in so doing, created a truly sustainable society? It is certainly not through dramatic – or draconian – state intervention, a possibility that contemporaries of Morris’s such as Anthony Trollope depicted in their own speculative fiction. As I discuss in this paper, Morris’s answer lies in the thoroughly integrated, intergenerational nature of the community he depicts, in which human flourishing encompasses all ages, and everyone has an active role to play in creating a self-aware society in dynamic balance with the earth’s own ecological carrying capacity.

Adrian Tait, Ph.D., is an independent scholar and ecocritic. He has published papers in a number of scholarly journals, including Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, European Journal of English Studies, and Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, and contributed to essay collections such as Victorian Ecocriticism (2017), Perspectives on Ecocriticism (2019), and Gendered Ecologies (2020).

Seminar Contribution

Daniel Chartier

Nordicity and aging - aging in the North of the world 

The objective of this communication is to explore, from the viewpoint of methodological and semiological reflections on images of the North and Winter, the areas of convergence with the multidisciplinary study of aging. What kind of general framework can be proposed, in terms of figures, mythemes, narrative schemes and cultural areas, which would make it possible to think the imagined North and Winter in accordance with age studies, and conversely, to think of the Winter and Northern cultural and social dimensions of aging as they are experienced in the circumpolar North, from Europe to Asia to North America. What are the conditions for aging in the North? What images and conditions related to Winter and cold particularly affect the aging process in this region? What measures have been put in place to face them? How to think about aging in a cultural context of the North? 

Daniel Chartier is a full professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal and director of the International Laboratory for Research on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic (https://nord.uqam.ca/). He has published 20 books and many articles on the images of the North, Winter and the Arctic, Québec, Inuit and Nordic cultures, cultural pluralism and reception theory. His main project aims to create links between circumpolar cultures, including Indigenous ones, and to reflect on the conditions of representation of the images of the North. 

Seminar Contribution

Christina Visted Jensen, Torje Hommedal Knausgård, Éloïse Lamarre and Marie Mossé

Going North : a Way of learning to die ? Readings of Vintersong - Ei bok om desember (Hanne Bramness) and “Eveline-georginene eller Skammen” (Lise Tremblay)

Poetry collection Vintersong - Ei bok om desember (2014) by Norwegian poet Hanne Bramness and short story “Eveline-georginene eller Skammen” by Quebec writer Lise Tremblay are being translated from Norwegian to French, and inversely by a group of students and professionals, as part of a cooperation between Université du Québec à Montréal and Universitetet i Bergen (Quebec-Norway : the future of book and literature industry : a collaborative project between two Nordic cultures, 2016-2021). Both works aim to represent the North. Though this North apparently takes two very different forms - Norwegian forests and fjords where winter slowly but surely expands its empire over animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms (Bramness) vs. small town life in Québec’s “Côte-Nord” that is realistically, even sociologically depicted (Tremblay) - yet both works deal with the same symbolic representation of North as closely linked to winter time. If this connection between North and winter has been thoroughly analysed by Quebecer geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin, it’s also embedded in a century-old Western (mainly Southern) imagery that makes of North and winter the space and time for trial, loss and end of life. Following our presentations and readings of the two works we will invite listeners to discuss with us the way(s) those two contemporary Nordic literary works deal with this imagery: do they take up the tradition or change it, and to what extent? 

Christina Visted Jensen has very recently completed her master degree in French studies at the University of Bergen. Under the supervision of Margery Vibe Skagen, she did her master thesis on the late French author Violette Leduc and her autobiographical novels, La Bâtarde and L’Asphyxie. She has also spent a year abroad at UQAM, where she completed an internship at the Imaginaire du Nord laboratory under the direction of Daniel Chartier.

Torje Hommedal Knausgård is currently in the second year of his bachelor’s degree in French studies at the University of Oslo. He was on exchange at UQAM in 2020 where he completed an internship under the supervision of Daniel Chartier.

Éloïse Lamarre is currently doing her master thesis in Literature at the Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM) under the supervision of Pr. Daniel Chartier. Her research focuses on the history and establishment of writing residencies in the North.

Marie Mossé is currently completing a joint PhD (Université du Québec à Montréal/Université de Lorraine) in Comparative Literature under the supervision of Prs. Daniel Chartier and Alain Guyot. Her thesis project deals with the European and American travel narratives in Iceland in 19th century.

Seminar Contribution

Aagje Swinnen and Hadewych Honné

Living Like an Artist: Late-Life Creativity and Meaning in Life

In times when creativity is commodified (Florida, 2012; Reckwitz, 2017) and gerontologized (Katz & Campbell, 2005; Swinnen, 2018, 2019), artists are often referred to as examples of successful aging (Gallistl, 2018) because they – supposedly – never retire and remain productive, curious, and flexible until the end of their lives. We argue that this definition of success is very limited in its neoliberal emphasis on creativity as a tool for productivity, health, and independency in older age and that these values are not meaningful in themselves. By contrast, qualitative interviews with ten professional artists over 65 who live in place (including walking interviews in their ateliers) indicate that it is rather their ability to express themselves through creative practices across the life course that gives meaning to their lives. Our data show the creativity with which our interviewees continued to turn their environments into spaces where they can express themselves artistically and, in doing so, find meaningfulness. We, therefore, see artists as particularly resilient in managing the contingencies of life and career across the life span instead of exemplifying the successful aging paradigm. We contextualize our findings by means of literature from the humanities and social sciences on topics such as aging and creativity, space and place in later life, the artist’s studio, and the self-fashioning of artists.

Aagje Swinnen is Professor in Aging Studies and head of the Department of Literature and Art at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University (NL). She has published on humanistic aging studies in, for instance, The Gerontologist, Journal of Aging Studies, Ageing & Society, and The International Journal of Aging and Later Life. Swinnen is also a founding member and previous chair of the European Network in Aging Studies and co-editor of Age, Culture, Humanities.

Hadewych Honné is a graduate of the M.Sc. in Cultures of Arts, Science, and Technology at Maastricht University. She collaborated with Prof. Swinnen in the ‘Living Like and Artist’ project as well as a D&I project on the experiences of academics pre- and post-retirement. Currently, Honné is a MA student in Governance of Technology and Innovation and, as of March 2021, a research assistant at the Human Technology Center at RWTH Aachen University (DE).

Seminar Contribution

Dominic Hardy

Drawing (from) the Aged Body: Aspects of the late Work of John Berger

In 1989, the late critic, novelist and artist John Berger revisited his assessment of sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986). Focusing on drawings the elder artist made of his own hands, Berger revisited the critical position towards Moore that he’d held since the 1950s. Distancing himself from earlier concerns with Moore’s production as tied to market imperatives, Berger now considered the sculptor’s lived experience, seen as that of a long life written into the artist’s body, a site of his or her knowledge. This paper sets out ways of seeing relationships between Berger’s drawing, writing, memory and commitment to public life in the ensuing decades, up to his death in 2017. Established since the1960s in the French alpine hamlet of Quincy, Berger continued to engage his imaginary, no less than his politics, with spaces beyond his mountains’ threshold. In his later decades he also gave pride of place to his lifelong engagement with drawing. I’d particularly like to think about his writings on political prisoners, whose bodies are the site of oppressive violence, and their relationship to drawings in which Berger conveys phenomenological experience grounded in the reality of his own body in the world.

Dominic Hardy teaches art history at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He leads the Laboratoire numérique des études en histoire de l'art du Québec and is co-researcher for the project Ateliers d'Artistes au Québec 1800-1980. Dominic is a regular member of the Centre de recherches interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ). 

Seminar Contribution

Christine Hansen

Come What May - Documenting the Loss of a Mother

In my presentation I will talk about Come What May (2014-15), an art project that attempted to cope with the loss and also to remember a mother who gradually faded away.  While working on this project I started to collaborate with four other artists that that worked with similar thematic. I will talk about this collaboration and the result of this, the exhibition Støvkrystaller (Crystals of Dust).  

Christine Hansen is an artist and art historian based in Stavanger. Hansen has explored her own family history in several projects. Hansen has a master of photography from the Bergen Art College (2000) and PhD in art history from the University of Bergen (2012). Hansen was an associate professor at the Art Academy, University of Bergen (2010-2019).

Seminar Contribution

Laura Cayrol-Bernardo

Vetulae. Depicting women’s ageing bodies in the Late Medieval West (13th-15th c.)

This paper aims to provide a holistic and comparative view of ideas and materializations regarding women’s ageing bodies in Late Medieval Western Europe with special focus on France, the Iberian Peninsula and Italy. While research on the depictions of older women in contemporary art, literature, and popular culture has recently begun to flourish, this topic remains largely unexplored with respect to premodern Europe. The goal of this paper is to supply historical depth to this important academic and societal debate and contribute to enrich the discussion with new perspectives. To do so, diverse types of source evidence including both texts and images that represent different facets of women’s ageing and old age will be analyzed. Particular attention will be given to the stereotyping and gender bias in regards to ageing often found among Late Medieval physicians, artists, and writers, evaluating its impact on cultural and medical knowledge both in the domestic sphere and within scholarly debate.

Laura Cayrol-Bernardo is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen and an associate researcher at the Centre d’Études Historiques of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales - EHESS (Paris). Her PhD thesis focused on ideas, materializations, and lived practices regarding older women in Late Medieval Iberia. She is currently developing a research project on the ageing female body in 15th c. Florence at the intersection of art, art theory, and natural history.

Seminar Contribution

Pascale Millot

Mirror, mirror, tell me who is the oldest one: Redefining Women’s Old Age Through Research and Creative Writing

Research combined with Creative writing represents a new approach to knowledge. Because it participates to the advancement of cognitive matters and to the construction of an artistic heritage, it opens original perspectives on experiential issues. In the creative part of my Ph.D project, I aim to capture, using a form akin to creative nonfiction or literary journalism, what constitutes the experience of being an old woman. By being an investigating writer in the field, I stand half way between journalism and literary narrative. Thus, I conduct numerous interviews with women over 70. Those testimonies are then selected, aggregated by themes or aesthetic pattern and rewritten to encapsulate, by face-to-face interviews first, by my rewriting in second time, what being an old woman in our contemporary societies means. By being both a story teller and a story keeper, by multiplying the points of view and representations, and collecting voices of old women, I intend to overcome the simple stories of « successful aging » to give voice and life to assumed and plural subjectivities which are generally invisible in the Public space.

Pascale Millot is a PHD Student in Research and Creative writing at University of Montreal, Canada. She teaches Literature in College. Before that, as a cultural and scientific Journalist, she has published in all the main Magazines and Newspapers in Quebec.

Seminar Contribution

Ieva Stončikaité

Literature & Creativity as Tools to Better Understand Ageing: The Case of Erica Jong’s Literary Career

Taking a life-course perspective, this presentation considers the intersections of creativity, arts and ageing in Erica Jong’s later works, and explores underlying changes in the author’s self-perception as a writer. It demonstrates the substitution of Jong’s initial “fear of writing” by increased self- knowledge, courage to speak her mind, and gradual capacity to ignore negative criticism. Although her later works reveal that ageing does not render the creative process easier, in Jong’s case the act of writing becomes fearless with age. An examination of the narrative construction of a sense of self through writing demonstrates how the author becomes more self-assured, which challenges the pervasive narrative of decline, and helps better understand the complexities of ageing and the artistic achievements of older adults. Jong’s works also contribute to the promotion of arts and literature as significant tools to reframe current debates about ageing and creativity, and foster the development of new visions of later life.

Ieva Stončikaitė holds a PhD (2017) in cultural and literary gerontology. She has been a pre-doctoral researcher at U of Fribourg (Switzerland) and TCAS (Trent U, Canada), and is a member of ENAS and Grup Dedal-Lit (U of Lleida). She has presented her research in conferences and journals, such as Journal of Aging Studies and Life Writing. Her research interests include cultural and literary gerontology, leisure tourism, arts-based research, and active and healthy ageing.

Seminar contribution

Bodil Hansen Blix

The necessity and possibilities of playfulness in narrative care with older adults

Narrative care is not merely about acknowledging or listening to people’s stories. Care itself is an intrinsically narrative endeavor. In this presentation, I build on Lugones’ understanding of playfulness, particularly her call to remain attentive to a sense of uncertainty, and an openness to surprise. Playfulness cultivates a generative sense of curiosity that relies on a close attentiveness not only to the other, but to who we each are within relational spaces. Generative curiosity is only possible if we remain playful as we engage and think with experiences and if we remain responsive to the other. Through playfulness, we resist dominant narratives and hold open relational spaces that create opportunities of retelling and reliving our experiences. Drawing on my work alongside older adults, I will show the possibilities of playfulness in the co-composition of stories across time.

Bodil H. Blix is Professor in the Department of health and care sciences, Faculty of health sciences, at UiT The arctic university of Norway. Her research interests are in the intersections of narrative inquiry and critical gerontology. She is interested in the lives and well-being of older adults in general and Indigenous older adults in particular.

Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design in Bergen

The building that hosts Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design and this year’s Last Chapter Seminar, was designed by the Internationally acclaimed architects Snøhetta. It is located by Store Lungegårdsvann, and is at the heart of one of Bergen’s changing city areas. We would have loved to have you all here in person, but look forward to coming seminars and future visits from all of you that contribute with such important and interesting work to our seminar!

Store Lungegårdsvann viewed from our highest mountain Ulriken before (above) and now (right).