Ageing Masculinities, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Narratives

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the ERA Gender-Net+ Project MASCAGE, the University of Graz (Center for Inter-American Studies) and the Government of Styria, Austria.

Bringing together insights from masculinity studies and age studies, this volume focuses on the gendered and relational perspectives in cultural representations of Alzheimer’s disease.

Combining a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the authors analyse the interrelations between masculinities and representations of dementia from a wide range of cultural contexts to explore it as an intensely gendered and cultural disease.

They examine memoir, film, poetry and prose fiction, and look at work from a wide range of authors, including Anne Carson, Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, to provide new insights into established narratives of dementia and explore the complex ways that the disease resists representation and narration and questions traditional views of selfhood and human development.

Heike Hartung has published widely in interdisciplinary ageing studies. Recent publications include Ageing, Gender and Illness in Anglophone Literature and Embodied Narration. She is a founding member of the European Network in Ageing Studies and co-editor of the Transcript Aging Studies publication series.

Rüdiger Kunow is a retired Full Professor and Chair of the American Studies program at Potsdam University, Germany. He is a founding member of ENAS, the European Network in Aging Studies, and currently involved in the MASCAGE project.

Matthew Sweney is an editor and translator, lecturer at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic and researcher in the MASCAGE project ＂Ageing Masculinities＂ at the Center for Inter-American Studies, University of Graz, Austria. He earned his PhD in English and American Studies at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.