Conference: Women & Aging: Bodies, Cultures, Generations
April 18-20, 1996

The Women & Aging conference focused on the representation and self-presentation of women in midlife and the later years, and it emphasized visual culture (photography, video, and film), literature (the novel, auto/biography, and the memoir), performance, consumer and medical culture, feminist theory, and cultural history. The three day conference was held in Curtin Hall 175. A book, Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations (1999, edited by Kathleen Woodward) emerged from the conference. This conference was the first to be advertised on the Center's website.

Center director Kathleen Woodward,
Teresa Brennan (New School), and Margaret Morganroth Gullette (Simmons)

Presentations by:

Nancy K. Miller (CUNY)
"On Body Work"
Mary Russo (Hampshire)
"On the Scandal of Intergenerational Bodies"
Stephen Katz (Trent Univ.) and Susan Squier (Pennsylvania State)
"On Medical Histories of Aging
E. Ann Kaplan (SUNY at Stony Brook) and Anne Davis Basting (UWM)
"On Theatres of Age"
Virginia Blum (Univ. of Kentucky), Glenda Laws (Pennsylvania State), and Rebecca Wepsic (UC, San Francisco)
"On Consumer Culture and Cosmetic Surgery"
Charlotte H. Wellman (Edinboro Univ. of Pennsylvania), Elisa Facio (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder), and Marie-Claire Pasquier (Paris X-Nanterre)
"On Sexuality and Aging"
Margaret Morganroth Gullette (Simmons)
"On Fashion and Nostalgia"
Joanne M. Braxton (William and Mary)
reading her poetry
Joanna Frueh (Univ. of Nevada)
"On Midlife Bodybuilding"
Vivian Sobchack (UCLA)
"On Scary Women in Hollywood Film"
Patricia Mellencamp (UWM) and Ayisha Abraham (India)
"On Visual Memories and TV Generational Time
Jodi Brooks (Univ. of Melbourne) and Anca Cristofovici (Univ. of Caen)
"On Visualizing Aging"
Nancy Backes (Marquette), Bethany Ladimer (Middlebury), and Christiane Orcel (California Institute of Technology)
"On Literary Visions of Aging"
Teresa Mangum (Univ. of Iowa), Deborah Owen (William and Mary), and Robin Pickering-Iazzi (UWM)
"On Cultural Histories of Aging in Nineteenth-Century England, "Old" New England, and Italy
Elinor Fuchs (UWM), Susan Cole (Albertus Magnus), and Christine T. Lowery (UWM)
"On Writing Auto/biography Across Generations"
Kathleen Woodward (UWM)
"On Generational Bonds"
Teresa Brennan (New School)
"On Psychoanalysis and Aging"
Jacqueline Hayden (Hampshire)
"On Her Photography"
preview of Oh, Rapunzel by video artist Cecelia Condit (UWM), in collaboration with Dick Blau (UWM)
performance artist Rachel Rosenthal (Los Angeles) on aging between the ears . . . . .

Discussants: W. Andrew Achenbaum (Univ. of Michigan), Ana Zahira Bassit (Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil), Mike Featherstone (Univ. of Teesside, England), Hilary Harris (CSU-Long Beach), Susan Heidrich (UWM), Melinda Heywood (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Sharon Keigher (UWM), Laura Stempel Mumford (Madison), Diane Rothenberg (Goldberg Health Care Center), and Anne M. Wyatt-Brown (Univ. of Florida).

Performance Artist Rachel Rosenthal (Los Angeles)

1968: The Center's Founding

The 1970s: Film, Performance, Language and Technology

The 1980s: Feminism, Modernism and Culture

The 1990s: Culture, Aesthetics, Aging and Animals

2000 to present

Center for 21st Century Studies

Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Interim Director