Ageing Masculinities, Alzheimer's and Dementia Narratives

Abstract

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.