CANDIDATE STATEMENTS

AMANDA BULL (for student representative)

I am pleased to submit my candidacy for re-election as the NANAS Student Representative. Over the past two years in this role, I have worked to strengthen student engagement, support emerging scholars, and build meaningful connections across our interdisciplinary community. As a PhD candidate in Social Gerontology, my research on workplace ageism and older workers’ experiences—alongside collaborations with organizations such as HelpAge Canada and the National Institute on Ageing—has reinforced my commitment to advancing age justice and fostering spaces for shared learning. If re-elected, I will continue to prioritize mentorship, collaboration, and inclusive participation, ensuring that student voices remain central within the network. I would be honoured to continue serving the NANAS community in this role.

SASKIA FÜRST (for member-at-large positions)

I am an Assistant Professor in the School of English Studies at the University of The Bahamas. My main research area focuses on Aging Studies, particularly representations of older Black women in literature and print advertisements in the US. I also look at Black diaspora representations in literature and films and have integrated young adult literature and Afrofuturism into my areas of interest. As my next larger project, I hope to conduct more research on Caribbean diaspora literature that features older women and magical realism. Some of my recent publications include “African American Women and Ageing: Remembering Afro-Amerindian Ancestors in Alice Walker’s Now is the Time to Open Your Heart” in the Bloomsbury Handbook to Ageing in Contemporary Literature and Film (2023) and “Visibility of Older Black Women in Literature: Female Ancestors in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow” in The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging (2024). I have also co-edited two volumes, one titled US American Expressions of Utopian and Dystopian Visions (2017) and the other one is Contemporary Quality TV: the Auteur, the Fans and Constructions of Gender (2021). It is vital that those of us who are passionate about the field of Aging Studies continue to emphasize the importance of diversity and foreground, when possible, intersectional approaches to Aging Studies; we must also strive to champion those researchers who are committed to these same goals and to maintain the quality and variety of research in this field.

KATIE JACQUES (for member-at-large positions)

I am a doctoral candidate nearing completion and writing a cultural history of age in the U.S. from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era. My commitment to age studies began a decade ago in a seminar called “Age in American Literature,” which shaped my research trajectory and inspired me to place age at the center of my scholarship. My master’s thesis examined the interplay of age, culture, and national identity, and untangled major paradoxes in cultural narratives of aging in the contemporary U.S. through an interdisciplinary and intersectional framework.

     In 2021, I joined the University of Kassel’s North American history department as a research associate in a German Research Foundation-funded project on age and embodiment, and since 2023 I have held a doctoral scholarship from the same university. My chapter “Reading Age(ing) in Cultural Archetypes: Nineteenth-Century Santa Claus’ New Ideal of Old Age,” which I presented at the 2025 joint ENAS & NANAS conference in Lleida, Spain, will appear in the forthcoming collection, Cultures of Aging in Transnational American Studies (eds. Julia Velten et al., transcript). Currently, I am adapting my dissertation into my first book, which uses cultural theory and diverse archival sources to trace conceptual and lived dimensions of age and aging from the nineteenth century to the present. Since summer 2025, I have co-led the ENAS Graduate Panel with Femke de Sutter to support and connect emerging scholars in the field.

     A long-time reader of Age, Culture, Humanities, and an active NANAS and ENAS member since 2022, I have benefitted both professionally and personally from the exchange, opportunities, and impetus for critical age studies scholarship that this community consistently fosters. I would welcome the opportunity to support NANAS through my work as member-at-large. As a new member of the governing board, I would be eager to learn how I can best be of service to the organization and its needs. I would be honored to contribute to the great work already taking place at NANAS, including helping its excellent ongoing initiatives remain successful and assisting new initiatives to launch by taking on responsibilities in those areas and elsewhere. I would be excited for the chance to further support the NANAS community and help advance the field of age and aging studies through this role.