Accessibility statement

Dress, Embodiment and the Cultural Turn in Age Studies

Wednesday 3 February 2016, 3.00PM to 5.00 pm

Speaker(s): Prof Julia Twigg

Clothes lie on the interface between the body and its social presentation. Dress is one of the ways in which social identity is made concrete and visible. We are accustomed to this in relation to identities such as class and gender, but it applies, I argue, also to age. In this presentation I will explore the role of dress in the constitution of age, addressing debates about the changing nature of later years and the possible role of consumption culture in this. In doing so, I will locate my analysis in the wider context of the emergence of cultural gerontology. This aims to present a fuller and richer account of later years than has been traditionally provided by discourses of social welfare and medicine, with their emphasis on frailty and burden. Drawing on work across the social sciences and humanities, cultural gerontology attempts to change the ways in which we think about and analyse old age, placing the subjectivity of older people - the width and depth of their lives - at the forefront of its analysis.

 

Location: W/243

Admission: Free - All welcome

Email: laurie.hanquinet@york.ac.uk

Telephone: 01904 324743