into views on aging in India and Japan
The ways that two very different cultures, those of India and Japan, view the experience of aging and caring for the elderly will be explored in a symposium at Yale on Friday, May 4.
Titled "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Aging Through Film and Stories from India and Japan," the symposium will take place 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. in the auditorium of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. The event is sponsored by Yale's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, and the South Asian Studies Council at the MacMillan Center. It is supported by the Council on East Asian Studies.
The organizers write: "Too often our consideration of the challenges of growing old and caring for the elderly takes place in a strictly Eurocentric context. ... We have specifically chosen to focus on film and the short story as two different media that vividly depict the experience of aging from the viewpoint of both the aging person and the caregiver."
The symposium will include film screenings and short story readings that, note the organizers, "help set the problems of aging in a global context. They have also been selected to reflect a common theme: the role of the daughter as caretaker in a rapidly changing traditional society."
The event will begin with a talk by Michael Teitelbaum, vice president of the Alfred Sloan Foundation and the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Scholar at Yale, who will speak about the demographics of aging in Japan and India.
The morning session, 8:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m., will focus on Japan. It will begin with a showing of the Japanese film "The Acacia Walk," (2001) which depicts the experience of a young woman caring for her mother who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Aaron Gerow, assistant professor of film studies and of East Asian languages and literatures at Yale, will both introduce the film and discuss it after the screening. A panel on the ethical and social dimensions of dealing with an aging population in Japan will follow; the presenters will be Karen Nakamura of Yale, a specialist on disability issues in Japan, and William LaFleur of the University of Pennsylvania, who has written on bioethics and abortion from the perspective of a scholar of religious studies.
The afternoon session on India, 1:15-4:15 p.m., begins with a short animated film, "Printed Rainbow," which won the Cannes 2006 best short film award. Ira Raja of University of New Delhi will introduce the film, read excerpts from short stories on aging and present reflections on aging in contemporary Indian fiction. Raja has written extensively on the issue of aging in Indian fiction and the mother-daughter relationship. She has also edited an anthology of stories that will be available to participants of the symposium. Sarah Lamb of Brandeis University, an expert on aging in South Asia, will respond.
Both sessions will be followed by general audience discussion.
Those interested in attending the event should send an e-mail to autumn.ridenour@yale.edu by May 1.
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