AGEING & GENDER
Professor George Rousseau's Annual Seminar Series 2019 engage the past as well as present and aim to historicize representations of masculine and feminine ageing.

Hovedinnhold
George Rousseau Annual Seminar 2019
Despite the recent growth of critical gerontology and demography of聽longevity, current understanding of the narratives of old age in the聽light of gender remains understudied. Everyone agrees the topic is聽pressing, even urgent, as a result of the growth in the elderly聽population, yet few have adopted a sufficiently broad historical聽perspective capable of assessing the dominant narratives in their聽local cultural contexts in order to expand knowledge of the field.聽These seminars engage the past as well as present and aim to聽historicize representations of masculine and feminine ageing. Building聽on the already well-developed interdisciplinary field of gender聽studies, the seminars probe how our understanding of both ageing 补苍诲听gender can be further developed by attending to old age. Of special聽interest are alternative narratives that have escaped critical聽attention so far or been altogether neglected.聽
George Rousseau聽(Oxford University)聽is a cultural historian聽who works in the interface of literature and medicine, and emphasizes the relevance of imaginative materials - literature, especially diaries and biography, art and architecture, music - for the public understanding of medicine, past and present. He聽is known as one of the founders of the internationally established field of Literature and Science, and of Literature and Medicine, academic attainments that feed into the seminars he offers as a visiting professor in Bergen from 2017-2020. Professor聽Rousseau is an ongoing member of the research project聽Historicizing the聽ageing self, funded by a SAMKUL award at the Norwegian Research Councilfor the period 2016-2021.聽
Professor Rousseau鈥檚 guests for this year鈥檚 seminar include writer and Professor of literature and gender studies, Sylvia Molloy, writer and Professor of gender studies, Wencke M眉hleisen, and composer and Professor of music, Jill Halstead Hj酶rnevik.
Sylvia Molloy聽(Buenos Aires, 1938)聽is currently one of the most important and influential Latin American intellectuals and writers. As an academic聽鈥she was a professor at Yale, Princeton and NYU聽鈥she is well known for her contributions in gender and queer studies, and for her work on Latin American autobiography. Also a novelist and an essayist, she has been, for many years, a writer's writer but her last books have reached a wider public. These last works (Desarticulaciones,听Vivir entre lenguas补苍诲听Citas de lecturas) are explorations on memory and identity prompted and challenged by ageing. In these books, Molloy registers the deterioration of a dear friend suffering from Alzheimer, investigates the relation between language and identity, and looks back into her own life throughout the books and authors that left a mark on her intellectual project.
Wencke M眉hleisen聽was professor of gender studies at the University of Stavanger from 2008 to 2014. She is currently working as a freelance scholar and author. M眉hleisen has published several academic books in which she explores questions related to gender, sexuality, feminism and politics. The novel, Kanskje det enn氓 finnes en 氓pen plass i verden (2015), is based on the story of her past as a performance artist and her life in a radical聽artists鈥 collective in Austria. The epistolary novel, All gjeldende fornuft (2017), is a reflection on female ageing, resonating with her most recent essay聽鈥Hetetokt: Rabalder med overgangsalder!(2018)听鈥on conceptions of menopause in science and cultural history. M眉hleisen has also written poignantly about her parents, especially about her mother's death in a mixed genre which recalls Annie Ernaux and Simone de Beauvoir's disturbing accounts of their aged and ailing mothers' last months and days.
Jill Halstead聽is a professor at the Grieg Academy 鈥 Department of Music, University of Bergen. 聽Jill麓s work explores the gendered politics of participation in a range of musical and social settings. She combines scholarly research and creative practice and has published on issues of music, identity and body politics in popular and classical music genres, and more recently in the contexts of health in music therapy. 聽Since the late 1990s she has worked creatively in the field of socially engaged arts practice, devising performances on location with groups who are marginalized or vulnerable. 聽Recent work includes composing music for a series of screendance works, participatory dances and live dance theatre performances tackling the social stigmatization of aging and loss. 聽Current funded projects include "Social Acoustics: Sound, Embodiment, Community" (2018-2021) with Prof. Brandon LaBelle, an interdisciplinary project which combines artistic and scholarly research across the faculties of Fine Art, Music and Design, Psychology and the Humanities at the University of Bergen.
PROGRAMME
September 10
14:15鈥15:15 | George Rousseau,听Female ageing in millennial American literature |
15:15鈥15:30 | questions |
15:30鈥15:45 | pause |
15:45鈥16:15 | Wencke M眉hleisen,听Cultural menopause: Love and sex in the time of infertility |
16:15鈥16:30 | questions |
16:30鈥16:45 | pause |
16:45鈥17:15 | Jill Halstead,听"I didn麓t think little old ladies wrote music like that": Gender and aging against the machine |
17:15鈥17:30 | questions |
17:30 | Reception |
September 11
14:15鈥15:00 | George Rousseau,听Male ageing in millennial American literature |
15:00鈥15:15 | questions |
15:15鈥15:30 | pause |
15:30鈥16:30 | Literature panel on ageing and gender before 1900
|
16:30鈥16:45 | pause |
16:45鈥17:45 聽 聽 | Literature panel on ageing and gender in 20th and 21st century fiction
|
September 12
14:15鈥14:30 | Soledad Marambio (Latin-American Literature, 幸运飞艇计划),听Introduction to Sylvia Molloy |
14:30鈥15:00 | Launch of Soledad Marambio鈥檚 documentaryPieces of memory: conversations with Sylvia Molloy |
15:00鈥15:15 | pause |
15:15鈥15:45 | Sylvia Molloy (will be present by SKYPE) answering questions from Jon Askeland (Latin-American Culture, 幸运飞艇计划) about literature, gender and ageing |
15:45鈥16:00 | pause |
16:00鈥17:00 | Summing-up with professor George Rousseau |
Each participant is invited to offer comments on the most important points they have derived from the discussions
痴别苍耻别:听Centre for Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies
University of Bergen /en/skok/105914/about-skok
The seminars are organized by the research project聽Historicizing the Ageing Self: Literature, Medicine, Psychology, Law聽funded by the Norwegian Research Council鈥檚 SAMKUL programme.