Alive and Kicking at All Ages

The linking of age and ill-health is part of a cultural narrative of decline as age is often defined as the absence of good health. Research has shown that we are aged by culture, but we are also culturally made ill when we age. The cultural ambiguity of aging can thus deconstruct negative images of old age as physical decrepitude. This volume investigates the topic of health within the matrix of time and experience by addressing issues such as how our understanding of health influences our notion of agency within a subversive deconstruction of normative age concepts, and what role the notion of health plays in such an interaction.

Ulla Kriebernegg is the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care (CIRAC) and an associate professor of American Studies at Universität Graz in Austria. In her research and teaching she focuses on North American literary and cultural studies, aging and care studies, and health humanities. She has taught internationally and has won several teaching and research awards. Roberta Maierhofer is Professor of (Inter)American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, and Adjunct Professor at Binghamton University, New York. Her research focuses on American Literature and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Transatlantic Cooperation in Education, Inter-American Studies and Age/Aging Studies. Barbara Ratzenböck, born in 1985, is a senior scientist at the center for Inter-American studies of Universität Graz. Her research focuses on interrelations of digitalization, (media) generations, and gender.