What exactly has age got to do with it? My life in critical age studies

By sidesteps and accidents, by reading in too many genres and fields at the same time, by being irritable about certain tics of theory, by trying as a freelance independent scholar to overcome my lack of training as a gerontologist or a historian or an anthropologist, I slowly moved beyond literary criticism toward a more satisfying literary-cultural criticism and inter-disciplinarity. The article describes my move from analyzing the midlife alone to a more inclusive age studies, from naive devotee of the progress narrative to a critic of both positive aging and decline ideology, from wielding a high style to a more personal voice appropriate for a broader audience. Becoming more political has been an important aspect of this development. The arc of my age critique has been toward a greater sense of urgency in combating the forces that produce contemporary ageism.