MaryGrace Trifilio

This doctoral dissertation project investigates the experience of aging in place in Brooklyn, New York and the ways in which federal, state, and local eldercare and urban development policy employ carceral logics which shape that experience for queer elders. I do not center senescence as a problem, but rather abandonment, disposability, exploitative labor, and gendered expectations of kinship and care in the United States. My dissertation project thus seeks to answer two main questions: What is the lived experience of aging in place while queer, and receiving eldercare when such care has been designed under a medical-carceral complex? What does this experience illustrate about how persons and kin are made and unmade? The reputation and seeming raison d’etre of New York City stands in stark contrast with the ethos of aging in place, making Brooklyn a critical site for this study. Over 100,000 elderly Brooklyn residents live alone and are at risk of becoming homebound and socially isolated. I am passionate about exploring these questions through dynamic and intersectional public scholarship that creates better lives for queer elders in the future.