Duke: The Gender of Care: Alzheimer’s Disease in the 1980s

In the 1980s, Americans grappled like never before with dementia, and specifically with Alzheimer’s Disease. This talk will return to this era with a historian’s eyes, asking specifically why families, and women in families, were viewed as the indispensable deliverers of care. There were other options on the table, and by placing America’s early debate about dementia into the context of the conservative 1980s, we are able to understand why, as a society, we made the choices that we did.

James Chappel, PhD is the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University. He is a fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging, and he writing a history of old age in modern America for Basic Books.

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