BU Research Blog

Representing Dementia in Film and Fiction

Dr David Orr, University of Sussex and Dr Yugin Teo, Bournemouth University

You are cordially invited to this seminar which is open to all BU staff and students.

Wednesday 25th April 2018

2.30 – 4 pm

F307, Fusion Building, Talbot Campus

Abstract

From something that was ‘not really talked about’ publicly, the last two decades have seen dementia explode into the public sphere and contemporary culture’s creative imaginary. Cinema, documentary, theatre, art, memoirs, biography, poetry, literary fiction and genre fiction have all taken up dementia as a prominent theme. The gerontological humanities have been exploring what these works reveal of the experiences, preoccupations, dilemmas and misapprehensions to which dementia gives rise. This presentation discusses selected examples of engagement with dementia within (1) cinema and (2) crime fiction, asking how these narratives might reflect and shape audience perceptions of living with the condition.

Biographies

Dr David Orr is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Sussex, where his principal research interests focus on adult safeguarding and self-neglect, global mental health, and representations of dementia in contemporary films and fiction. He has worked on a number of knowledge reviews for the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Sociocultural Perspectives on Global Mental Health. Before entering academia, he worked in Community Mental Health Teams in the areas of Adult Learning Disability and Older Adult Mental Health.

Dr Yugin Teo is Lecturer in English and Communication at Bournemouth University. He has previously taught literature and film at the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex where he completed his doctorate. His research on the representation of memory in literature and film has been published in the journals Critique, Medical Humanities and Science Fiction Film and Television. His research monograph Kazuo Ishiguro and Memory was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.