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Anna Corwin: Embracing Age. How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well

Date
May 24 , 2022 

The next talk in the online webi­nar series Unfold­ing Fini­tudes: Cur­rent Ethno­gra­phies of Aging, Dying and End-of-Life Care on Tues­day May 24, 2022, 17.00–18.30 CEST.


We would like to invite you to attend the next talk in the online webi­nar series Unfold­ing Fini­tudes: Cur­rent Ethno­gra­phies of Aging, Dying and End-of-Life Care on Tues­day May 24, 2022, 17.00–18.30 CEST.

We are very hap­py to announce that in this webi­nar Dr. Anna Cor­win (Saint Mary’s Col­lege of Cal­i­for­nia) will talk about her recent book Embrac­ing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Mod­els of Aging Well. Dr. Kris­tine Krause (Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam) will act as dis­cus­sant for the talk.

Reg­is­tra­tion: If you would like to join the webi­nar, please reg­is­ter here. You will then receive the zoom-link for the webi­nar one week in advance.

NB: Please note that this webi­nar starts lat­er in the day than pre­vi­ous webi­na­rs in this series, name­ly at 17.00hrs CEST.

About the book

Embrac­ing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Mod­els of Aging Well exam­ines a com­mu­ni­ty of indi­vid­u­als whose aging tra­jec­to­ries con­trast main­stream Amer­i­can expe­ri­ences. In main­stream Amer­i­can soci­ety, aging is pre­sent­ed as a “prob­lem,” a state to be avoid­ed as long as pos­si­ble, a state that threat­ens one’s abil­i­ty to main­tain inde­pen­dence, auton­o­my, con­trol over one’s sur­round­ings. Aging “well” (or avoid­ing aging) has become a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can pre­oc­cu­pa­tion. Embrac­ing Age pro­vides a win­dow into the every­day lives of Amer­i­can Catholic nuns who expe­ri­ence longevi­ty and remark­able health and well-being at the end of life. Catholic nuns aren’t only health­i­er in old­er age, they are health­i­er because they prac­tice a cul­ture of accep­tance and grace around aging. Embrac­ing Age demon­strates how aging in the con­vent becomes under­stood by the nuns to be a nat­ur­al part of the life course, not one to be feared or avoid­ed. Anna I. Cor­win shows read­ers how Catholic nuns cre­ate a cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty that pro­vides a mod­el for how to grow old, decline, and die that is both embed­ded in Amer­i­can cul­ture and quite dis­tinct from oth­er Amer­i­can models.

About Anna Corwin

Dr. Anna I. Cor­win is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Saint Mary’s Col­lege of Cal­i­for­nia. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA and is a recip­i­ent of fel­low­ships from the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion and The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties for her research on aging and well-being.

About Unfold­ing Finitudes

The Euro­pean Research Coun­cil-fund­ed Glob­al­iz­ing Pal­lia­tive Care project at Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty is host­ing a three-month­ly webi­nar series that high­lights cur­rent anthro­po­log­i­cal research on care, aging and dying. Dur­ing this series, invit­ed speak­ers present their recent or ongo­ing ethno­graph­ic work in this field. Our aim is to cre­ate a plat­form for dis­cus­sion of nov­el anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tives on unfold­ing fini­tudes at the end of life.

We hope to see you in the webinar!

Best wish­es,

Natashe Lemos Dekker and Annemarie Samuels