Title: Imagining the Future in Rooms of the Past: Age, Space, and Memory in Contemporary Care Home Narratives
Summary: In literature and film, care homes often symbolize the experiences, fears, and uncertainties faced by older adults. Positioned at the intersection of hotel and hospital, these spaces reflect the marginalized, vulnarabilized status of older adults while fostering powerful counter-narratives that resist peripheralization. This talk discusses contemporary care home novels from Canada, the U.S., and Europe, including Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night, David Chariandy’s Soucouyant, May Sarton’s As We Are Now, and Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter. It examines how memory loss and dementia are not merely individual experiences but also politically charged representations of society's forgetfulness regarding its violent past. By exploring how the care home signifies both confinement and possibility, the analysis highlights opportunities for continued growth and development throughout the life course, even within institutional settings, illuminating the complex interplay between space, identity, and the future for older adults.
Speaker Biography: Ulla Kriebernegg is the founding director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Age and Care (CIRAC) and full professor in Cultural Aging and Care Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She is also an adjunct professor at the Medical University of Graz. Her academic focus is on age studies and the health humanities. She is the author of Putting Age in its Place: Long-Term Residential Care in Contemporary Film and Fiction (forthcoming) and co-edited Care Home Stories: Aging, Disability and Long-Term Residential Care (2017) as well as Aging and Ecocriticism: Interdisciplinary Encounters (2023). A founding member and former president of the European Network of Aging Studies (ENAS), Ulla currently holds the position of Associate Editor for Humanities and Arts at The Gerontologist. She is a Fellow of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society in Canada, the AgeCap Center at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), where she will begin her term on the Board of Directors in January 2025. Ulla has taught internationally across several countries, including Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay, and the USA, and has been recognized with numerous teaching and research awards.
Participants may attend the seminar in-person at Room 1002 of the Life Sciences Centre at UBC, or virtually via Zoom. Zoom details for virtual attendance can be found below.
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Zoom Meeting ID: 93567 416276 | Passcode: 416276
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