Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Margaret is a cultural critic and prize-winning writer of nonfiction, an internationally known age critic, essayist, and activist. Her latest book, (2011) is Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America. Aged by Culture was chosen as a “Noteworthy Book of the Year” by the Christian Science Monitor. Declining to Decline won the Emily Toth Award as the best feminist book on American popular culture. Margaret’s focus on the midlife (in Safe at Last in the Middle Years and Declining to Decline) has expanded to become Age Studies. Age studies from childhood on can be as powerful as studies of gender or race in empowering people to challenge American decline culture and join an anti-ageist movement.

Margaret’s essays, one the winner of the Daniel Singer Millennium Prize, are frequently cited as notable in Best American Essays. She has published in the N.Y. Times, Ms., Nation, Boston Globe, American Scholar, American Prospect, womensenews.org; many literary quarterlies; and such journals as Feminist Studies, Representations, Journal of the History of Sexuality. She lectures often in the United States and Europe; her work is cited by scholars and journalists and used in courses. A recipient of NEH, ACLS, and Bunting fellowships, she is a member of PEN-America. In Nicaragua, her work has helped hundreds of adults to become literate and graduate from high school.

Current Projects

Margaret is developing the interdisciplinary field of age studies through lectures and publications, and completing a family political memoir about becoming an activist in Nicaragua.

Representative Publications

Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. Aged By Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.