Institutional care for seniors offers a cultural repository for fears and hopes about an aging population. Although enormous changes have occurred in how institutional care is structured, the legacies of the poorhouse still persist, creating panicked views of the nursing home as a dreaded fate. The paradoxical nature of a space meant to be both hospital and home offers up critical tensions for examination by age studies scholars.
The essays in this book challenge stereotypes of institutional care for older adults, illustrate the changes that have occurred over time, and illuminate the continuities in the stories we tell about nursing homes.
O autorze
Sally Chivers is a Full Professor in the Departments of English and Gender & Women’s Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and a founding executive member of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society.
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.