When Toula's father in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" says to his daughter (age 30) "you look so old" or when Don DeLillo's protagonist (age 28) "feels old" in "Cosmopolis", these young characters are attributed an age awareness that has received little attention in age studies so far. Leaving aside chronological or biological dimensions of age, this study approaches age as a metaphoric practice, suggesting that "feeling old" is not to be taken literally but metaphorically. The book examines the cultural meanings of age and aging for characters who are in their twenties and thirties and challenges often-quoted labels such as late-coming-of-age story or perpetual adolescence.

What does your body know? With this question the artist Yvonne Buchheim invited people into her studio for portraits attempting to capture body knowledge. What she did not know was the story that her own body would tell. In this art book, Buchheim shares her story of healing from cancer. Her artworks are poetic reiterations between visual and written language, revealing the many effects that serious illness can have on the body and mind. The artwork is complemented by two essays that explore fragility and resilience in surviving illness. Kopfüberleben (Life Turned Upside Down) presents us with creative forms of storytelling that use drawing, photography, and stop-motion filmmaking not as documents but as a narrative of self-discovery. Text in English and German.

Metaphor in Illness Writing argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need not be dropped or dismissed. Metaphors are not inherently harmful or beneficial; instead, they can be used in unexpected and creative ways. This book analyses the illness writing of contemporary North American writers who reimagine and reappropriate the supposedly harmful metaphor 'illness is a fight' and shows how Susan Sontag, Audre Lorde, Anatole Broyard, David Foster Wallace and other writers turn the fight metaphor into a space of agency, resistance, self-knowledge and aesthetic pleasure. It joins a conversation in Medical Humanities about alternatives to the predominance of narrative and responds to the call for more metaphor literacy and metaphor competence.

Serialized storytelling provides intriguing opportunities for critical representations of age and aging. In contrast to the finite character of films, television narratives can unfold across hundreds of episodes and multiple seasons. Contemporary viewing practices and new media technologies have resulted in complex television narratives, in which experimental temporalities and revisions of narrative linearity and chronological time have become key features. As the first of its kind, this volume investigates how TV series as a powerful cultural medium shape representations of age and aging, such as in "Orange Is The New Black", "The Wire" or "Desperate Housewives", to understand what it means to live in time.