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Language, Religion, and Learning to Embrace the Human Lifecourse 

ANNA I. CORWIN, 2021, Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well. 

New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 180 pp., ISBN 978-1-9788-2227-6 

Keywords: aging, religion, death, language, well-being  

Embracing Age is a masterful ethnography of convent life illuminating the linguistic, 

psychological, and cultural processes that shape the late-life experiences of Franciscan sisters in 

the American Midwest. It is a 188-page, soft-cover volume in the Global Perspectives on Aging 

series, edited by Sarah Lamb. The author, Dr. Anna Corwin, a linguistic and psychological 

anthropologist, draws from a decade of ethnographic visits to the assisted living and infirmary 

halls of a Catholic convent to unveil the sociolinguistic and historical contexts that support nuns’ 

well-being through the lifecourse. This synthetic work culminates Corwin’s previous publications 

into a central claim that anthropological methods and theory illuminate the way nuns socially and 

linguistically embrace age to experience well-being despite age-related decline. The compelling 

applicability of Corwin’s conclusions make Embracing Age a critical read for social scientists, 

clinicians, and thoughtful humans alike. In a society obsessed with “successful aging,” but caught 

in a paradox that inhibits its realization, scholars like Corwin serve as trustworthy guides as they 

blend humanities and science into works of vital significance.  

 

The book’s introduction welcomes the reader with a clear and concise substantive foundation. Key 

bodies of anthropological scholarship include language socialization, especially the work of 

linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs, and on the anthropology of aging, the work of cultural 

anthropologist Sarah Lamb. David Snowdon’s epidemiological work with nuns’ health, and 

medical anthropological scholarship on pain and healing are frequently referenced. Corwin’s 



 

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commitment to clarity and accessibility is fully displayed in the introduction and consistently 

reinforced throughout the text. Her first-person perspective is reflective and sometimes vulnerable, 

transmitting the deep humanity and ultimate importance of her research questions.   

 

The book’s ethnographic content is organized into two parts and seven chapters. Part I describes 

the processes of life in the convent, particularly the social and spiritual, and connects these 

processes to the nuns’ experience of aging and well-being. Part I is stylistically intimate and 

weaves the reader into rich dialog with the author and ethnographic interlocutors. Part II deploys 

a more scholarly style to expand analysis to the complex social and historical unfoldings through 

which the nuns have lived and aged. The chapters include carefully selected and analyzed linguistic 

transcriptions collected during the fieldwork to enliven the scholarship and scaffold the reader to 

participation in the analytic process. Each chapter concludes with a concise but comprehensive 

summary of the key points. Following Part II is a holistic conclusion connecting the scholarly 

concepts to sensible applications. This first edition is printed in small type-font with tight line 

spacing, making for light and easy handling, but difficult visual reading.  

 

Part I includes four chapters that connect the nuns’ ideologies and practices to their experience of 

aging by describing the ethnographic field and tenets of linguistic analysis. Chapter 1 outlines the 

physical, social, and temporal elements of the convent. Nuns’ life history narratives and the 

author’s own story of arrival and integration leads the reader to the space, the rhythms, and divine 

presence at the convent of The Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Chapter 2 explores cultural 

and scholarly discourses on aging and well-being, contrasting the dominant discourse on successful 

aging with the nuns’ practice of embracing aging. Corwin concludes that Americans’ cultural 

concept of successful aging is actually better described as an anti-aging model where value in old 

age is ascribed using the same neoliberal principles of independence and productivity that drive 

value throughout adult life. The nun’s exceptional well-being in late life is attributed to the 

rejection of this anti-aging paradigm and an acceptance of inevitable declines in independence and 

productivity. Methods for assessing the nuns’ well-being, including a quality of life questionnaire 

and the resulting score ranges, are also included in this chapter. Chapter 3 directs an 

anthropological lens to the prayer practices in the convent to show the multimodal functions of 

prayer. Public intercessions communicate the presence of God and social support of fellow sisters 



 

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while linguistically socializing attitudes on age, suffering, and death. These prayer practices serve 

as a way of both teaching and learning how to embrace age. Chapter 4 describes the communicative 

strategies used to uphold meaningful engagement in the convent as some sisters experience 

declines in cognitive and communication function. This chapter produces clinical and social 

applications by elucidating the importance of avoiding elderspeak and detailing how meaningful 

engagement is maintained with jokes, blessings, and narratives. These conversational forms limit 

communicative burdens on cognitively impaired interlocutors by eliminating the necessity of 

sophisticated responses. This chapter is insightful, complimenting therapeutic literature on 

cognitive-communication disorders to reveal the unique power of linguistic and cultural analysis 

through ethnography.  

 

Part II includes three chapters to describe the social and historical changes in Catholic ideology 

and convent practices that shaped the nuns’ life course and their experience of aging, suffering, 

and death. Catholic reformations in the 1960s, known as Vatican II, resulted in significant 

ideological, institutional, and habitual changes that impacted nearly all aspects of life in the 

convent. This historical restructuring in Catholicism, through which many of the ethnographic 

informants lived, is central to the sociohistorical analyses of part II.  Chapter 5 analyzes nuns’ 

narratives to track how habitual prayer practices have shaped their perspective on God and their 

own bodily vulnerabilities. Pre-Vatican II, God was interpreted as a distant authority who allocated 

pain. Transformed prayer practices reframed God as an intimate caregiver who exists within and 

in support of a suffering body. This non-punitive and amoralistic reevaluation of God’s 

involvement in suffering casts painful aging as an opportunity for divine comfort and communion. 

Chapter 6 tracks the still-developing and sometimes conflicting understanding of healing within 

and between Catholic ideology and biomedicine. The aging nuns work to reconcile the 

contemporary medical model of pain as a problem-to-solve with the theological notion of pain as 

inevitable and spiritually opportunistic. Still a work in progress, the nuns balance conflicting 

biomedical and Catholic prescriptions by engaging with both medical and spiritual modes of 

healing to maximally respect their own bodily divinity. Chapter 7 explores the theological notion 

of kenosis, the emptying out of oneself, as central to the sisters’ vows and practices of poverty, 

chastity, and obedience. Vatican II resulted in individually variable levels of change in the meaning 

and practice of these vows, which are shown to influence how the nuns relate to material goods 



 

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and self-determinism in later life. Corwin argues that kenosis and acceptance are linked and 

essential to nuns’ ability to embrace age. Nuns who remained committed to kenotic practices 

throughout their lives are better prepared to accept the inevitable age-related losses in ability and 

independence. 

 

A conclusion to the book emphasizes how anthropology reveals the interconnected cultural, 

historical, and habituated practices that shape the nuns’ exceptional level of peace and joy in late-

life. While noting the specificity of context in which the nuns enjoy a rich and connected aging 

experience, Corwin offers seven lessons to the reader that revolve around embracing age through 

social and linguistic habituated practices. Like a well-packed bag, Embracing Age thoughtfully 

includes all necessities without unwieldy intellectual distractions or jargonistic burdens. Corwin’s 

writing maintains clarity and conciseness throughout, using minimal words to effectively carry 

great meaning. Embracing Age establishes Anna Corwin as a masterful writer and inspirational 

guide to a future of well-being.  

 
Seth Dornisch is a PhD student in Biocultural Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts 

Amherst. His research focuses on well-being through life course transitions, particularly on the 

role of religion, place, and materiality in late-life and death. He is a licensed speech-language 

pathologist specialized in gerontology.  

 
 

 

© 2022 Seth Dornisch 

 


