Conference ‘Women and Ageing: New Cultural and Critical Perspectives’
University of Limerick, 20-22 May 2015
Conveners: Dr Cathy McGlynn, Dr Maggie O'Neill and Dr Michaela Schrage-Früh
Conference Programme
Wednesday May 20
8.45 –9.30 am: Registration (Plassey House)
9.45 – 10.00 am: Official opening (Jean Monnet Theatre)
Opening Comments: Michaela Schrage-Früh and Cathy McGlynn
Welcome Address: Dean Tom Lodge
10.00-11.00: Keynote Address 1
Meg Harper: ‘The Problem of Crazy Jane’ (Jean Monnet Theatre)
Chair: Maggie O'Neill
11.00-11.30: Tea and Coffee (Plassey House)
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11.30-1.00 am: Parallel Sessions 1 & 2 (Plassey House)
Panel 1: Sociological and Cultural Perspectives on Ageing (Chair: Liz Brosnan)
Kinneret Lahad and Haim Hazan (Tel Aviv University, Israel): ‘The Return of the Old Spinster: Social Death
in Late Singlehood’
Cinta Ramblado (University of Limerick, Ireland): ‘Prisoners’ Women / Women Prisoners: Age, Maturity
and Political Commitment in Franco’s Spain’
Ricca Edmondson (NUI Galway, Ireland): ‘Wise Older Women and “Gerontophobic Shame”’
Panel 2: Ageing Spinsters, Wives and Mothers in Literature (Chair: Deirdre Flynn)
Amber Jones (Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, USA): ‘Closing In: Examining the Role of Spatial
Restrictions for Ageing Mothers’
Ivana Nemet (Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia): ‘Years of Danger: Spinsterhood in the
Eyes of Jane Austen’
Cathy McGlynn (University of Limerick, Ireland): ‘“A Life of Her Own”: Ageing Women in the Work of
Sylvia Townsend Warner’
1.00-2.00 am: Lunch (Plassey House)
2.00-3.30 pm: Parallel Sessions 3 & 4 (Plassey House)
Panel 3: Irish and European Perspectives on Ageing (Chair: Eva Adelseck)
Cathy Fowley (Dublin City University, Ireland): ‘Growing Old Online: Stories, Communities and Role
Models’
Bozena Cierlik (University College Cork, Ireland): ‘Ageing, Women Minorities and Displacement:
Challenges of Growing Older Using the Example of Polish Migration in Ireland’
Karen Hvdtfeldt Madsen (University of Southern Denmark): ‘“. . . man ist nur einmal jung, als Frau
besonders”: Ageing Women in Edgar Reitz’ Heimat-series’
Panel 4: Ageing in Irish Narratives (Chair: Meg Harper)
Theresa Wray (Independent Scholar): ‘A Certain Truth in Fiction: Perceptions of the Ageing Process in Irish
Women’s Fiction’
Maggie O'Neill (University of Limerick, Ireland): ‘“This is How Time Unfolds When You Are Old”: Joseph
O’Connor’s Ghost Light’
Michaela Schrage-Früh (University of Limerick, Ireland): ‘“I Want a Poem I Can Grow Old in”: Ageing in
Irish Women’s Poetry’
Catherine Kilcoyne (Independent Scholar): ‘Maternity Leave Woman’
3.30-3.45 pm: Tea and Coffee (Plassey House)
3.45-5.30 pm: Parallel Sessions 5 & 6 (Plassey House)
Panel 5: Ageing in Contemporary Writing (Chair: Marieke Krajenbrink)
Deirdre Flynn (Mary Immaculate College, Ireland): ‘Murakami’s 1Q84: A Dowager of One’s Own’
Antoinette Pretorius (University of South Africa): ‘Giving Birth to One’s Death without Anaesthetic: Age of
Iron, Senescence and Political Transition’
Yianna Liatsos (University of Limerick, Ireland): ‘Accounting for the Ageing White Body: Illness and the
Family Archive in Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat’
Saskia Fürst (University of Salzburg, Austria): ‘Humor and Masquerade as Narrative Techniques for an
Authentic Older Black Women’s Self in Terry McMillan’s “Ma’Dear”’
Panel 6: Creativity, Poetry and Lived Experience (Chair: Michaela Schrage-Früh)
Ann Webster-Wright (Griffith University Brisbane, Australia): ‘Dancing into the Night: The Politics,
Performance and Poetics of Ageing as a Woman’
Caroline Coyle (Athlone Institute of Technology, Ireland) and Nicole McKenna (Athlone Institute of
Technology): ‘Phenomenal Woman: A Poetic View of the Social Construction of Widows in Society’
Jo Slade (Independent Scholar / poet): ‘Language of Loss and the Loss of Language’
Eileen Casey (Independent scholar / poet): ‘The Hall of Mirrors’
6.00 pm: Poetry Reading: Medbh McGuckian (Millstream Common Room)
Chair: Michaela Schrage-Früh
Followed by Wine Reception
Thursday May 21
9.00-10.00 pm Parallel Sessions 7 & 8 (Plassey House)
Panel 7: Ageing and the Visual Arts (Chair: Catherine Marshall)
Julia K. Dabbs (University of Minnesota, Morris, USA): ‘Making the Invisible Visible: The Exemplarity of
Older Women Artists in the Early Modern Period’
Julie Silveira (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada): ‘Archiving the Self: Visual Narratives of Gender
and Ageing in Feminist Art’
Panel 8: Ageing in Modernist Literature (Chair: Cathy McGlynn)
Elizabeth Barry (University of Warwick, UK): ‘“Narrower and Narrower would her Bed be”: Woolf, Colette,
De Beauvoir and the Change of Life’
Rachel Hynes (University of Limerick, Ireland): ‘“My Clothes Are Too Shabby”: Fashion and Ageing in the
Fiction of Jean Rhys’
10.00-10:30 Tea and coffee (Millstream Common Room)
10:30-12.00 pm: Roundtable on Women and Ageing (Millstream Common Room)
Chair: Tina O'Toole (University of Limerick)
Speakers: Gisela Holfter, William O’Connor, Catherine Marshall, Ailbhe Smyth, Sue George
12.00-12.45 pm: Lunch (Plassey House)
12.45-2.30: Parallel Sessions 9 & 10 (Plassey House)
Panel 9: Identity, Performance and the Body (Chair: Yianna Liatsos)
Susan B. Poulsen (Portland State University, USA): ‘An Ageing Woman’s Existential Dilemma: Who and
What to Be’
Kalyco Stobart (NHS, UK): ‘Narrative Disruptions, Altered Trajectories and Emerging Identities in Midlife
Women’
Zuzanna Sanches (University of Lisbon, Portugal): ‘Country Girl: A Memoir. Edna O’Brien and the
Narrative of the Self’
Maxine Horne (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK): ‘An Older Dancer Dancing Older Lives’
Panel 10: Ageing in Ireland (Chair: Cathy Fowley)
Pauline O’Connor (Department of Health, Ireland): ‘Dutiful Daughter, Homemaker, Wife, Mother,
Employee: How Has Her Identity and Position in Irish Society Changed over the Decades? Who Cares?’
Aoife Prendergast (Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown, Ireland): ‘Ageing with Attitude: Constructing
Undergraduate Social Care Students’ Attitudes for a Valued Identity for Women’
Michelle O’Connor (Limerick Institute of Technology, Ireland): ‘My Life Is Just Passing Me By and What
Am I doing? Just Minding, Minding, Minding: Grandmothers Raising Grandchildren in Ireland’
Liz Brosnan (NUI Galway, Ireland): ‘Ageing Women in 3 Irish Cities: What Issues Arise for Community
Involvement and Lifecourse Connections?’
2.30--2.45 pm: Tea and coffee (Plassey House)
2.45-4.15 pm: Parallel Sessions 11 & 12 (Plassey House)
Panel 11: Ageing and the Cult of Youth in Fairy Tales, Children’s Stories and Juvenile Fiction (Chair:
Sinead McDermott)
Miriam Walsh (Mary Immaculate College, Ireland): ‘The Evil of Ageing: How the Evil Feminine Found Her
Voice in Modern Fairy Tales’
Donna Mitchell (Mary Immaculate College, Ireland): ‘How the Cult of Youth and Social perceptions of
natural Female Beauty are Reflected in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours’
Amanda Piesse (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland): ‘Retiring Grandmothers: An Infinite Variety’
Panel 12: Ageing Women and Dementia (Chair: William O'Connor)
Mary Galvin (University College Cork, Ireland): “‘I was always taking photographs. That’s why I’m never
in them”: The Experiences of an Ageing Spinster Living with Dementia’
Valerie Heffernan (Maynooth University, Ireland): ‘Ageing Maternal Bodies, Ageing Maternal Minds:
Contemporary Narratives of Dementia’
Eva Adelseck (University of Manchester, UK): ‘On the Issue of Dependency in the Portrayal of Female
Dementia Sufferers in Contemporary Film’
6.00 pm Keynote Address 2
Germaine Greer: ‘The Deconstruction of Motherhood, Liberation or Oppression?’
(Public Reading, Jean Monnet Theatre)
Chair: Cathy McGlynn
8.15 pm Conference Dinner (The Pavilion Restaurant)
Friday May 22
9.15-11.00 am: Parallel Sessions 13 & 14 (Plassey House)
Panel 13: Changing Feminist Perspectives and Experiences (Chair: Angela Chambers)
Gemma M. Carney (Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland): ‘Unmasking the “Elderly Mystique”:
Can Feminist Politics Subvert Ageism?
Ieva Stončikaitė: (University of Lleida, Spain) ‘Erica Jong’s Sappho’s Leap: Re-discovering Motherhood
through Ageing’
Sylvie Lannegrand (NUI Galway, Ireland): ‘Jocelyne Francois, Ageing and/in Diary Writing’
Sue George (Independent Scholar): ‘“You’re not still bisexual are you?” The experiences and meanings of
bisexuality for some women over 50’
Panel 14: Ageing in Drama and Performance (Chair: Rachel Hynes)
Una Kealy (Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland): ‘Fading into Invisibility: Women and Ageing in
Teresa Deevy’s Wife to James Whelan’
Shauna McGrath (Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland): ‘The Nightmare of Ageing in Marina Carr’s
Woman and Scarecrow’
Anna Mooney (Ulster University, Northern Ireland): ‘Female Ageing in Northern Irish Drama’
Bridie Moore (University of Sheffield, UK): ‘Interoception, Intersection and Interruption: The Age
Performances of Peggy Shaw’
11.00-11.30 am: Tea and Coffee (Plassey House)
11.30-12.30 Keynote Address 3
Patricia Moran: ‘The Strange Adventures of Ageing’
(Jean Monnet Theatre)
Chair: Michaela Schrage-Früh
12.30-1.30: Lunch (Plassey House)
1.30-3.00 Parallel Sessions 15 & 16 (Plassey House)
Panel 15: Ageing on Film and Television (Chair: Joachim Fischer)
Susan Liddy (Mary Immaculate College, Ireland): ‘Mature Female Sexuality On-Screen: Euphemism and
Evasion?’
Ewelina Twardoch (Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland): ‘The Older Woman and Sexuality in Films’
Katherine Whitehurst (University of Stirling, UK): ‘Stories of Motherhood and Ageing in ABC’s Once Upon
a Time’
Panel 16: Male Perspectives in Irish Writing (Chair: Maggie O'Neill)
Brenda O’Connell (NUI Maynooth, Ireland): ‘Samuel Beckett’s “hysterical old hags”: the ageing maternal
feminine in the radio play All That Fall’
Anne Nash (Mary Immaculate College, Ireland): ‘The Ageing Body as Text in a Selection of the Fiction of
William Trevor’
Clare Gorman (University College, Dublin, Ireland): ‘The Changing Face of the Irish Female within Sean
O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and Paul Howard’s Fictional Series’
3.00-3.30: Documentary by Franziska Kroh (NUI Galway):
‘Three Conditions: Micheline Sheehy Skeffington’
With Tea and Coffee (Plassey House)
Chair: Cathy McGlynn
Closing Remarks: Conference Organisers
End of Conference