Topic: Interviewing a family member and analyzing their experiences about gender time change

Order Description Assessed Coursework Details The aim of this assignment is to bring together the themes/components of this module in a way which forefronts the theoretical and methodological issues involved in thinking about, and researching, the meaning and experience of age in the present and/or past. Interview – You must undertake a 30 min - 1 hour interview with a friend, colleague or family member of your choice about some aspect of age or the life course - their experiences, expectations, understandings. For example, you might focus on: the experiences of ageing or of becoming an adult; expectations and perceptions of adulthood or old age. The interview can be talk only or include photo-elicitation. Ideally you should record the interview, but you can rely on notes if you prefer. You do not need to transcribe the interview. If you do a photo-elicitation interview it is best to focus on one or two photos. If possible, please include a photocopy of photos discussed. In your written assignment you must address all 4 points below in order to get the best mark. How you structure the essay is up to you. Points 2-4 should form the main part of your assignment. 1. Include a very brief introduction to the person you interviewed, their gender, their age now and the age you will address in your assignment. If you used photos briefly introduce these. (Maximum 200 words) 2. How does your interviewee talk about age and/or the life course? Is gender an important feature of their experiences, meanings, expectations? (Make sure you think of interview questions or prompts that can tease this out.) Why do you think gender is or isn’t important in the interviewee’s account? 3. How, if at all, does your interviewee’s account relate to recent literature and/or debates about age and the life course? How do you explain this? For example you might engage with debates about the importance of gender in shaping the meaning and experience of age; arguments about age and age stages (eg adulthood) changing their meaning over time; claims that the life course is now fluid or ‘postmodern’. 4. How did the dynamics of the interview process, and particularly those that relate to temporal matters (memory, age) and gender shape the interviewee’s account and your interpretation of it? Note that we address this question in general terms in in lecture/workshop 4. If you did a photo-elicitation interview, how did your interviewee engage with the photo(s)? Note that we discuss this in lecture/workshop 8. Relate your comments to your interview (use quotes from the interview where possible) and try and link your comments to relevant literature. For example, you might link to literature about how people’s memories or accounts of their lives are constructed.