Ageing (with) animals

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ageingwithanimals

 

ACT is organizing a brainstorming day on the theme of Ageing (with) animals on Saturday, April 4th, 2015 on the SGW campus of Concordia University in Montreal from 10 am to 4 pm.

Humans share life courses with other species: often willingly with cats, dogs and other “pets” in tightly tangled relationships. We age with pets. And they age with us. But also these relationships can become difficult, disrupted and untenable, especially through conditions of old age. Animals are otherwise commodified for entertainment, get euthanized in zoos and circuses when they get old, less active, less lucrative and more expensive. Or they are moved to sanctuaries for them to retire out of sight, and indeed it is even possible to talk about animals retiring. Animals, live and animatronic, are enlisted in old age homes and hospitals for therapeutic purposes. Animal figures are routinely taken up in our lexicon of ageing bodies, often in ways that reify (hetero)normative social orders (cougars, silver foxes and cat ladies). In addition, the proliferation of ageing human bodies and our increasing life expectancies are enabled by medical innovation and testing that intimately rely on the confinement, mistreatment and death of other species.

The idea for the Ageing (with) animals day is as follows: we come together to discuss and explore our overlapping creative and research interests on animals and ageing. We explore intersections and generate discussions on the multiplicity and connectedness of ageing bodies and life courses: a line of questioning that is often excluded from the way ageing and cultural studies have thought about age, and even from the way animal studies have engaged with the topic of animal lives. Among others, ACT collaborator Dr. Teresa Mangum from the Obermann Center and from Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa will join us.

SB 403
Concordia University

Those interested in participating can contact constance (dot) lafontaine (at) concordia (dot) ca.

Playing Age Symposium to be held February 27-28, 2015

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ACT is co-sponsoring the Playing Age symposium, to be held February 27 and 28 at the University of Toronto. The inter-disciplinary symposium is co-organized by ACT collaborator and Professor Marleen Goldman and Professor Lawrence Switzky of the University of Toronto. Kim Sawchuk, Director of ACT, will discuss “Challenging Digital Ageism through Research Creation” and Stephen Katz, ACT co-applicant, will present “Use It or Lose It!: Brain Games and the Performance of Age.”

The symposium “Playing Age” offers a humanistic exploration of aging, old age, and inter-generational relations. Seminal theorists of play, from Johan Huizinga to Roger Caillois, claimed that rule-bounded games and mimetic enactments create a “magic circle” in which conflicts within the self and the community can be negotiated at a safe remove. More recently, performance and game theorists have insisted that even playing within the bounded precincts of a stadium, a theatre, or a video game influences everyday conduct, particularly when we play with volatile topics like inter-cultural representations, social class, race and gender. This symposium asks how aging and old age can be investigated through playing, specifically the playfulness of artistic representations, and whether aging is uniquely available for or resistant to imaginative inhabitations.

For more information about the symposium, including full programme, please consult the website: https://playingage.wordpress.com.

 

Guest Prof. Eugène Loos to offer a conference on senior citizens and information accessibility at the IN3-UOC, Barcelona

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The Mobile Communication, Economy & Society Research Program (CMES) of the IN3-UOC is hosting for the public talk Prof. Dr. Eugène F. Loos, from the University of Amsterdam, will give next April 11th in Barcelona, Spain (one of the places where the Ageing Communication Media network has presence).

The title of the conference is “Senior citizens: Digital immigrants in their own country? Debunking myths of age related information accessibility”. Population in most western countries is ageing at a rapid pace, and at the same time, these countries are increasingly becoming digitised by providing information in a digital form. The question raised by Loos is: to what extent is there an actual problem for senior citizens who are looking for accessible information? Are they really digital immigrants in their own country? The speaker will address these questions by presenting 5 common myths on the topic and will attempt to debunk them based on empirical research, which will be illustrated by documents and videos.

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Fighting Bill 78

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From a Montreal Facebook site. The helicopters fly overhead. It sounds like a city under siege, a government waging a war against its own people.

ACM at CCA

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The ACM will presenting at the CCA, Wilfrid Laurier University, May 30, 2012.

Ageing (Communications) Media: Interdisciplinary,Transnational Approaches/ Vieillissement et médias (de communication): approches interdisciplinaires et transnationales. Panel H4 in room HH 1108, 3:30 – 5:00 pm. Papers: Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol & Lidia Arroyo, Missed Calls: Barcelona and Los Angeles Compared”, Chui Yin Wong, “Extraordinary Lives: Living, Working and Ageing in Malaysia”; Barbara Crow & Kim Sawchuk, “The Concept of Mobility: Absent, Present and Alone Together”; Line Grenier, Ageing as/and Enduring: Discussing with “Turtles [that] Don’t Die of Old Age”.