Kudos!
Joy Ciofi (Georgia State University) recently completed her PhD from the University of Connecticut. Her dissertation, entitled “Aging and Identity in the Landscape of the Mega-Casino,” focused on older adults, retirement, and casino use in the Northeast US. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, she argues that argue that “the overwhelming majority of older adult
gamblers do so responsibly, and also receive many benefits from their casino experiences. The abundance and variety of activities within these massive, all-inclusive facilities provides elderly and retired guests with the opportunity to make plans, socialize, and stay mentally and physically active. …Despite the unwavering profitability of the House edge, my findings from interviews and observations within these two casinos reveal that these spaces have become valuable for seniors who frequent them. This research contributes to ongoing conversations within anthropology, gerontology, and surveillance studies by describing the unique subjectivities of a demographic who has managed to exert a sort of tactical resistance against larger structures of ageism and surveillance to make valuable spaces-of-aging out of the most unlikely of settings.” She already has two articles from this research (see below). And next up: Ciofi has accepted a position as postdoctoral Research Associate at The Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University. Many congratulations!
Brittney M. Howell (University of Alaska Anchorage) has started a Healthy Aging Lab at University of Alaska Anchorage. Through the Lab, Howell and her student colleagues have several ongoing projects including an assessment of healthy aging in Anchorage and an intervention to bring a health promotion program to low-income seniors. Take a moment to check out the HAA and see their exciting work. We look forward to updates on how it progresses!
Sarah Lamb (Brandeis University) has been named a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. As a fellow, she will continue her current line of research on successful aging. The new project, “Successful Aging’s Global Moment: Visions and Dilemmas of Aging Well,” examines “successful aging as a global social-cultural, political-economic, and medical-philosophical movement, as it plays out differently in the US, India, and China. Through rich ethnographic fieldwork, Lamb explores how older people—in diverse social circumstances and cultural settings—varyingly engage with ideals of successful aging in their everyday lives, while illuminating a wider set of possibilities for imagining what it is to live meaningfully in older age.” You can read more about the award and the project at The Brandeis Now story and the Carnegie Corporation’s announcement. Congratulations on this fabulous award!
Publications
Ciofi, Joy. 2019. Aging and Personhood in the Landscape of the Mega-Casino: Retirement at the Tables. Anthropology & Aging 40(1): 63-76. doi.org/10.5195/aa.2019.200.
Ciofi, Joy. (in press). The Ambivalent Subject: Reconciling Contradictory Experiences of Surveillance. Surveillance & Society.
Danely, Jason. 2019. The Limits of Dwelling and the Unwitnessed Death. Cultural Anthropology34 (2), 213-39. doi.org/10.14506/ca34.2.03.
Danely, Jason. (in press). Aging. Oxford Bibliographies of Anthropology.
Howell, Britteny M. and Shoshana Bardach. 2019. “It’s a Social Thing:” Sociocultural Experiences with Nutrition and Exercise in Anchorage, Alaska. Arctic Anthropology 58(2): 1-16.
Howell, Britteny M. & Kathryn E. Davis. 2019. New Physical Activity Guidelines Highlight Opportunities for Older Adults, Senior Voice: Special Edition on Health and Fitness, January 15, 2019: H2-H8.
Lamb, Sarah. 2019 (online first). On Being (Not) Old: Agency, Self‐Care, and Life‐Course Aspirations in the United States. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. doi.org/10.1111/maq.12498.
Perkinson, Margaret A. 2019 (online first). International fieldwork in the age of global aging: Fostering intercultural competence through student research and service provision in a residential care facility for older Guatemalans. Gerontology and Geriatrics Education. doi.org/10.1080/02701960.2018.1561445.
Barney, Karen F. & Margaret A. Perkinson. (Eds.) (2016). Occupational Therapy with Aging Adults: Promoting Quality of Life through Collaborative Practice. Elsevier Publishing Co. [Translated into Korean]
O’Hare, Ann M., Claire Richards, Jackie Szarka, Lynne V. McFarland, Whitney Showalter, Elizabeth K. Vig, Rebecca Sudore, Susan Crowley, Ranak Trivedi, Janelle S. Taylor. Emotional Impact of Illness and Care on Patients with Advanced Kidney Disease. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. 13 (7) 1022-1029. doi.org/10.2215/CJN.14261217.
Additionally, several AAGE members took part in the final section of Somatosphere’s Thinking with Dementia collection, including Jason Danely, Aaron Seaman, Janelle S. Taylor. It’s also a great time to revisit the entire collection, edited by Kristina Krause, Jeannette Pols, Annelieke Driessen, and Emily Yates-Doerr.
