In 2023, novelist Rachel Cusk argued that the French writer Annie Ernaux had “broken every taboo of what women are allowed to write.” Throughout her fifty-year-long career, Ernaux has used innovative formal techniques to write about deeply personal—and often shameful—experiences. In her fearless, “flat” style she has described having an illegal abortion (Happening); embarking on an affair while being treated for breast cancer (The Use of Photography); and the pain of putting her mother in a care home (I Remain in Darkness). She has also written extensively about aging and older age, raising provocative questions about how we care for others, how we understand collective memory, how the culture around us introduces us to ageist thinking, and how different generations interact with each other.
This special issue of Age, Culture, Humanities focuses on what Ernaux’s various texts can teach us about aging and the life course. We welcome cross-disciplinary papers focused on individual works or that situate her oeuvre within wider socio-cultural conversations about aging. Authors may wish to consider the intersection of age, gender, and social class or perhaps put the recent Nobel laureate’s works in dialogue with those of another writer. We also encourage authors to consider Ernaux’s late-life political activism, including how #MeToo inspired A Girl’s Story and her involvement in the French anti-ageist organization called the CNaV.
Possible topics – which need to engage with the topic of age and aging from a humanities perspective – include:
- Narrating care and dependency
- Intergenerational relationships
- Sexuality and desire across the life course
- Class mobility and its effects on the experience of aging
- The experience of rereading texts as one ages
- Anglophone and francophone representations of aging
- Success and fame in later life
Alongside conventional research articles (~8,000 words), we seek to publish shorter pedagogical papers that demonstrate how Ernaux’s books, essays, film, and photographic projects might be used to discuss aging in teaching (3,000 words). We would also be delighted to publish interviews related to Ernaux’s work. All articles will be peer-reviewed.
Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 words to sm4680@princeton.edu and anna.goulding@northumbria.ac.uk with a short biographical note by September 1st, 2025. Abstracts from scholars at all stages of their careers and working in any discipline are welcome. We will communicate publication decisions by September 19th, 2025.
Deadline for abstracts: September 1, 2025
Deadline for papers: December 1, 2025
Age, Culture, Humanities publishes articles on a rolling basis, so as soon as articles are ready, they will be published.