Fall 2023 Open Position(s)
“American Eldercide, a book (forthcoming)” Research Assistant Fall 23 academic semester wth WSRC Scholar Margaret Gullette, WorkDay ID R0009132Project Description:
This position is for up to 50 hours over the Fall 23 academic semester. Schedule is flexible and will be worked out with the Scholar.
Those who lived and died in the nursing homes were mainly indigent (70%), mainly women (70%), of many ages, races, ethnicities, and physical, cognitive, and behavioral conditions. No other writer has expressed the magnitude of this ongoing loss to their families, friends, and the nation. This was no inevitable biological catastrophe, as many believe. Grieving family members suspect what I will show in American Eldercide--that their loved ones died prematurely because of neglect, indifference, ignorance--and the othering of compound ageism.
The shocking neglect grew from sources of intersectional ageism (a mash of sexism, ableism, racism, and most of all, “dementism” and classism) that were active long before the pandemic. But the responses to COVID worsened ageism in measurable ways. Starting as a humanizing elegy for the dead, with eloquent quotations from the surviving residents about their experiences in Year One of the pandemic, American Eldercide exposes the main failures of the COVID Era--including the former president’s delays and medical abuses of the Do Not Resuscitate order. It details the backstories of pre-existing ageism on the parts of Congress, CMS, and the states in creating the system funded by Medicaid for protecting indigent older adults. It closes with a call for a monument to these special dead, transformation of public-health care for residents of the facilities, and change in the ageist biases of American culture. My writing of American Eldercide is almost complete. The press's copy-editing comes next; then the Index.
Student Responsibilities:
Student Partners helped with important research in 2021-2023. Now,the goal is to bring the work to a close and to write an essay on neglected questions. It will involve:
Research: After the residents were vaccinated, and it turned out that so many survived the ghastly conditions of the lockdown, did their facilities offer therapy for PTSD? Are they suffering from long COVID? What specifically needs reform now? This involves media research, looking for residents who have been interviewed, and medical research, looking for answers to the other questions.
Bibliography and Index: All the chapters have endnotes, which I have compiled into one bibliography of about 30 pages. The endnotes and bibliography need to be cross-checked for accuracy. Quotations in the text need to be checked—randomly—by reading the original material in the urls. Some page numbers are missing. Some urls are missing. The Index comes next—a guide for readers, the creation of which is an intellectual puzzle for an SSP and me.
Qualifications:
Related Coursework: Any course on intersectional bias. Any courses on medicine, public health, eldercare, how legislation is made, the media, critical thinking.
Technical Skills: Some experience producing a bibliography. Comfort with WORD, bibilographic styles; ability to use search engines inventively; ability to ask research librarians for help when necessary. Efficiency, lack of ageist bias or willingness to overcome bias, self-starter.
Past Experience: Working with an NGO or other sign of interest in action-oriented research; experience with older adults.
Other: strong writing, editing and critical reading skills; enthusiasm for working in a partnership oriented environment