Elizabeth Markson

Areas of Expertise

Aging and the Life Course; Gender; Health; Family


Email: emark@brandeis.edu

Current Project

My research focuses on how ideological and sociodemographic changes affecting older women’s lives have been reflected in feature films.  During eight decades of American film remarkable social changes have occurred.  What messages has the celluloid American dream created of older women (60+)?  To what extent do these cinematic images reflect persistent or time-bound ageist and gender stereotypes?

Biography

Elizabeth Warren Markson studied at Bryn Mawr College, University of Chicago, and received her Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University.  She taught at SUNY-Albany, Wellesley College, and Boston University, where she was Academic Director of its Gerontology Center, and has been a visiting scholar in gerontology at the University of Auckland. She also maintains a practice in couples and individual therapy with a focus on life transitions.

She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, and clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.  Author/co-author/editor of nine books and over 70 journal articles, relevant publications include Older Women (1983), Social Gerontology Today (2003) Intersections of Aging (2000), and Older Women: An Annotated Bibliography (2004). Media appearances include Pacific Radio (NZ), CNN, PBS, WHDH, and WBZ; her research on women and film has been featured in various publications, including the Los Angeles Times. Her current interests combine several long-term interests: gender, aging, family, and film, the aim of which is to examine persistence and change in culturally constructed cinematic versions of older women’s lives.

Education

Ph.D., Yale University

M.A., Yale University

B.A., Bryn Mawr College

Representative Publications

Markson, Elizabeth W.  “The Female Aging Body through Film” in Aging Bodies: Images and Everyday Experience, edited by Christopher A. Faircloth, 77-102.  Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 2003.

Markson, Elizabeth W. and Taylor, Carol A.  “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”  Aging and Society 20 (2000):137-60.