NOG Research Day hosted by the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality
October 19, 2024
https://graduategenderstudies.nl/nog-research-day-october-19-2024/
Exploring Gender(ed) Dynamics in Long-term Romantic Relationships in Midlife
Jasmine Bruce-Rogers and Avery Franken
Both in popular culture and scientific research midlife has come to represent a period of significant transitions, including, but not limited, to having children and children leaving the house, promotions and retirement, fluctuating care responsibilities and grief. Gendered differences in expectations and assumptions surrounding aging, care, and status, among others, are inextricably laced through each of these well-known transitions. As part of Dr. Rahil Roodsaz’s project, Rhythms of Love: Enduring Romantic Relationships at Midlife in Contemporary Western Europe, we will conduct ethnographies in Berlin, Germany and Malmö, Sweden, exploring how people from diverse backgrounds maintain long-term romantic relationships throughout these midlife transitions within varying cultural, social and political contexts. We aim to trace temporalities, or everyday rhythms, of enduring love, and in doing so, elucidate different conceptions of the good life.
Using multimodal methodologies, including go-alongs, love-life histories, photography and audio diaries, we will investigate the ways in which individuals evolve together in the midst of societal shifts toward individualism and self-improvement, as well as developing understandings of gender, sexuality, and the family. Among others, this project will seek to answer the following questions: (How) does gender (or gender expectations) generate different experiences of midlife and its associated transitions? How do evolving conceptions of gender and gender roles find their way into the shared space of long-term romantic relationships? How do partners respond to or grapple with changing notions of gender in maintaining their relationships? What role do children, parents and other significant relationships play in the understanding and enactments of gender within these relationships? How can changes in people’s understanding of gender dynamics and/or the negotiation of these roles be seen in spatialised everyday practices, or rhythms?
Rhythms of Love 