In Southeastern Europe, cultural perceptions and personal experiences of aging and old age, although ambivalent and multifaceted, are embedded in a general discourse of catastrophe: The region is at the forefront of a global trend in population aging. Southeast European countries are also among those EU member states with people’s lowest life expectancy. While increasing longevity is one of the main drivers of demographic aging in Western Europe and North America, a key factor in Southeastern Europe is the high out-migration of younger people. This development fuels fears and leads to what critical gerontologist Stephen Katz refers to as “alarmist demography.”
Fiction and film may partake in this ageist discourse, yet also offer alternative, more positive and empowering visions. Literary and cinematic representations or theater performances – as well as their interpretations – not only reflect but also challenge dominant narratives about older people as a burden and aging as threat, loss, and decline. The SEE Aging Graz 2025 conference seeks to investigate this kind of transforming representations (in the double sense of the word): We intend, on the one hand, to trace and analyze how artistic representations of aging and old age have evolved and transformed over time and, on the other hand, to examine the potential of these representations to transform individual attitudes, cultural mindsets, and social practices.
The conference will focus on South Slavic – Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovenian – literature and visual arts from the 1960s, when demographic concerns began to shape communist policymaking, up to the present. Papers delivering insights into Albanian, Hungarian, and Romanian literatures and cinema of this period are equally welcome, as are pertinent explorations of transcultural literature. We invite paper proposals that provide in-depth analyses of narratives and images of (Southeast European) aging, allowing to discern continuities and breaks in the contents and forms of representing old age. Papers adopting a comparative approach are particularly encouraged.
Abstract submission by February 15, 2025, to see.aging(at)uni-graz.at
Organizing committee
PD Dr. Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl
Prof. Ulla Kriebernegg
Prof. Tatjana Petzer
How to get to the University of Graz (Route planner)
This conference is organized within the framework of the research project “Transforming Anxieties of Ageing in Southeastern Europe: Political, Social, and Cultural Narratives of Demographic Change,” Volkswagen Foundation (2023–2027).