USF Sarasota-Manatee's Valerie Lipscomb contributes expertise on literature and aging in new book

• Michelle Holden, USF College of Arts and Sciences
• September 16, 2024
• Accomplishments, Research

Dr. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb, a professor of English at the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus, served as a lead editor and contributor on the recently published "The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging," which, divided into four sections, features more than 30 contributors on three continents and 200,000 words of new scholarship. The endeavor was supported in part by a USF Women in Leadership and Philanthropy Faculty Research Award.

According to the book's summary, "the volume reflects the current conversations in the field: intersections and intersectionalities, traveling concepts, methodological innovations, and archival inquiries. It encompasses the spectrum of critical approaches that literary age studies scholars employ, from environmental studies and postcolonial theory to critical race theory and queer studies."

"Palgrave invited me to create a peer-reviewed volume on literature and aging for their Handbook series. They gave me free rein to conceive the volume as well as choose collaborators and contributors, so I immediately asked Aagje Swinnen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands to co-edit, as literary age studies are very much an international conversation. Together, we invited proposals from pioneers and seminal thinkers of the field as well as earlier-career scholars," Lipscomb said.

"We aimed at a comprehensive treatment of the field of literary age studies, with a focus on new directions in research. The book covers all genres of Anglophone literature, all time periods, and a wide range of critical approaches - from gender studies to posthumanism," she continued. "While close reading continues to be a mainstay of literary criticism, the handbook highlights alternative tools and routes in both data elicitation and analysis, challenging how we define literature and what literature can do in the world. Much of the book tackles the endemic ageism in Western culture and how we can work to eradicate it."

Lipscomb said she expects the volume to be a major driver as the humanities conversation about age and aging moves forward.

"While traditional gerontology often takes a medicalized approach to aging, literary scholars ask us to consider what it means to grow older, minute by minute. In the larger public discourse, we view literature both as mimetic and as a force to shape culture, a way to identify and combat the ageism all around us."

"We hope this will serve as an essential reference work for advanced students and scholars of literary studies, gerontology, age/aging studies, interdisciplinary studies, and cultural studies."