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Age Studies, Part Two Bethany Stotts, January 12, 2010 As reported earlier, one professor discussing age studies at the 2009 Modern Language Association Convention focused her talk on Ghost World’s messages about adolescence and other items of a more prurient nature. The other three speakers, however, drew a parallel between ageism and “neoliberal” economic policies. Age as Class Conflict Speaking on a panel entitled “Age and Affect: Fear, Denial, Fantasy,” Ph.D. candidate Andrea Charise discussed elder abuse as it is depicted in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period. “In this paper I argue…that disgust is a...

Age Studies, Part One Bethany Stotts, January 12, 2010 Since its inception Accuracy in Academia has catalogued the inner politics of a series of Humanities disciplines, including women’s studies, queer studies, fat studies, labor studies, and others. This article will introduce a lesser-known Humanities field: age studies. A recent panel at the 2009 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention offers clues as to what literary scholars consider the norm in this discipline: “Temporal Drag” in Ghost World Lecturing on the “ghostlike” period of adolescence post-high school graduation, University of Sussex professor Pamela Thurschwell reflected on the difference between Daniel Clowe’s profanity-laced...