Overview

Care is fundamental to human survival, yet it is often overlooked, undermined, undervalued, and thought of as 'women's work'. Care of the old is particularly low in status and is too readily occluded. This volume asks why and how cultures of care for older people are negatively configured. It examines some of the powerful responses to relationships of intergenerational care in recent creative works by women. It thereby contributes to the contemporary imperative to transform care by investigating some of the ways in which care might be redefined and reconceptualized. Taking as its focus the representation or narrativization of care in theory, literature, visual culture, and performance, it engages with contemporary female-authored works from diverse cultural contexts, encouraging the development of comparative, cross-cultural perspectives. Narrative is key here, for it is in stories about ageing and care that the complexities and ambiguities of care relationships are made available, and that simplified ideas about them are challenged. This volume will be of interest to scholars in literary and cultural studies, gender studies, critical age studies, the medical and health humanities, and all who are interested in care.