Successful Aging: Best Agers at the Intersection between Differentiating Age and Achievement (A04)

• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442261292

This project explores how human differentiations in terms of “age” and “performance/achievement” converge in current discourses on “successful aging”. It discusses (self-)representations of “successful aging” in different media in order to ascertain what effects the new choreography of “age indifferent forms of aging” may affect normative constructions of age. On the one hand, extreme old age is connoted as positive in discourses of “best aging”; on the other hand, however, elderly high achievers may be seen as an implicit counter-narrative to “normal” aging, which is often associated with deficiency and disability.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1482: Studies in Human Categorization
• Applicant Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Mita Banerjee