Start of Gerontology Lecture Series to Coincide with Symposium on Aging

David G. Troyansky, an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, will speak on "Aging in Pre-Industrial France" on Thursday, September 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium. His talk will be the first of three in the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute Distinguished Speaker Series, which brings leaders in the field of gerontology to campus. These talks are free and open to the public.

Troyansky, who has written three books and numerous articles on the way social institutions and families supported older adults in Old Regime France (1551–1789), will also be one of three keynote speakers at a three-day academic symposium, "Aging in Pre-Industrial Western Society." About 30 scholars — some coming from as far away as England, Finland, and Denmark — are expected to attend the symposium, which will be held at the College September 9–11.

"The conference will bring together historians and scholars of literature who study aging in pre-industrial society in the hopes of formulating new and more precise conclusions about the lives of the elderly in premodern Western cultures," says Katharine Kittredge, associate professor of English and local coordinator of the conference. "It will be an opportunity for scholars to present their most recent research in a setting that will encourage participants to access the current state of the field."

The speaker series will continue through the fall. On October 4 Suzanne Kunkel, director of the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University, will address the topic of global aging. On November 4 Graham D. Rowles, associate director of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky, will talk about rural communities in transition.