Dr. Valerie Lipscomb. (Photo courtesy of the 最新天美传媒)
Dr. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb, a professor of English at the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus, served as a lead editor and contributor on the
recently published 鈥�,鈥� which, divided into four sections, features more than 30 contributors on three
continents and 200,000 words of new scholarship. The endeavor was supported in part
by a USF Women in Leadership and Philanthropy Faculty Research Award.
According to the book鈥檚 summary, 鈥渢he volume reflects the current conversations in
the field: intersections and intersectionalities, traveling concepts, methodological
innovations, and archival inquiries. It encompasses the spectrum of critical approaches
that literary age studies scholars employ, from environmental studies and postcolonial
theory to critical race theory and queer studies.鈥�
鈥淧algrave invited me to create a peer-reviewed volume on literature and aging for
their Handbook series. They gave me free rein to conceive the volume as well as choose
collaborators and contributors, so I immediately asked Aagje Swinnen of Maastricht
University in the Netherlands to co-edit, as literary age studies are very much an
international conversation. Together, we invited proposals from pioneers and seminal
thinkers of the field as well as earlier-career scholars,鈥� Lipscomb said.
鈥淲e aimed at a comprehensive treatment of the field of literary age studies, with
a focus on new directions in research. The book covers all genres of Anglophone literature,
all time periods, and a wide range of critical approaches 鈥� from gender studies to
posthumanism,鈥� she continued. 鈥淲hile close reading continues to be a mainstay of literary
criticism, the handbook highlights alternative tools and routes in both data elicitation
and analysis, challenging how we define literature and what literature can do in the
world. Much of the book tackles the endemic ageism in Western culture and how we can
work to eradicate it.鈥�
Lipscomb said she expects the volume to be a major driver as the humanities conversation
about age and aging moves forward.
鈥淲hile traditional gerontology often takes a medicalized approach to aging, literary
scholars ask us to consider what it means to grow older, minute by minute. In the
larger public discourse, we view literature both as mimetic and as a force to shape
culture, a way to identify and combat the ageism all around us.鈥�
鈥淲e hope this will serve as an essential reference work for advanced students and
scholars of literary studies, gerontology, age/aging studies, interdisciplinary studies,
and cultural studies.鈥�