Introduction: Age and gender in the humanities and social sciences: contemporary and historical perspectives dedicated to roberta maierhofer

Abstract

In this Special Issue of the Journal of Aging Studies, we endeavour to honor Roberta Maierhofer's inspiring scholarship by original research that addresses the intersections of age and gender in cultural Age/ing Studies and Critical Gerontology. From the perspective of feminist literary studies, Roberta Maierhofer introduced the term “anocriticism” in the late 1990s to analyze literature concerned with female aging processes. The contributions in this Special Issue bring together many different perspectives on the intersecting categories of age and gender, linking sociological perspectives to those of film and literary scholarship. In this way our collection of articles hopes to continue the tradition of interdisciplinarity that characterizes not only critical gerontology, but is also the hallmark of Roberta's oeuvre as a literature scholar whose interests and approaches have been versatile, wide-ranging and truly humanistic.