Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee

What does my research in the CRC focus on?

As head of the project "Successful Aging: Best Agers at the Intersection of Age and Performance Differentiation," I am interested in the question of how age difference is culturally "produced" in contemporary Western societies such as the United States. What happens when a biological process is suddenly linked to differences in perfomance? How can one age successfully or less successfully at all, and in which areas does one demonstrate one's "success"? In this context, together with Ruth Gehrmann and Lisa Brau-Weglinski, I also explore the question of how the "predicate" of "successful aging" is assigned in the first place and in which media and genres successful aging is performed. In a recent essay, I consider the self-representation of Baddie Winkle, the world's oldest underwear model. How do we engage with unusual performances of age, including the intersection of questions about age, gender, or attractiveness?

What shapes me and my research?

In my research I deal with different forms of differentiation, with age difference as well as with other categories such as ethnicity or disability. I am also interested in how cultural processes of differentiation relate to categories of difference as they are created through medical discourses. Do cultural texts (e.g., autobiographies, novels, documentaries, social media) incorporate, resist, or reshape these categories? Interdisciplinary approaches such as Aging Studies and the Medical Humanities play an important role for me. In my book "Centenarians' Autobiographies: Age, Life Writing and the Enigma of Extreme Longevity" (De Gruyter, 2023; forthcoming), for example, I examine how centenarians rigorously reject the medicalization of longevity in their autobiographies and instead counter it with cultural narratives.

What has brought me to the CRC?

I was a member of the DFG research group "Un/Doing Difference", from which the CRC "Studies in Human Differentiation" emerged. At the same time, I was co-speaker of the DFG Research Training Group "Life Sciences, Life Writing: Boundary Experiences of Human Life between Biomedical Explanation and Lived Experience," until 2023, and within this framework I worked at the intersections between medicine and literature. As a professor at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, I am also primarily concerned with the question of how U.S. discourses shape European perceptions of differences and processes of differentiation, and what advantages and limitations such a transfer can entail.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich