Dear Colleagues,

We have received many proposals from specialists of literature and
would love to hear from anthropologists as well.
Please feel free to circulate!
Kind regards from France,

Cécile

Mother Figures and Representations of Motherhood in English-speaking
Societies

               Alternately celebrated and pilloried, mother figures have
been assigned contradictory roles throughout the histories of
English-speaking societies. Reflecting the power structures and conflicts
of their times, they have been portrayed as pillars of society, providing
material and emotional security, and models of sacrifice, or vilified for
failing to perpetuate the expected values of individual responsibility and
self-control. Nearly a century after winning political emancipation and
almost half a century after the historic struggles for sexual
emancipation—which yielded unequal results from one country to another—,
women in all segments of society in the USA, the Republic of Ireland, the
United Kingdom and the Commonwealth are still regarded as second-class
citizens, particularly when viewed and politicised through the lens of
motherhood and mothering. While social change has gradually progressed
since early conflicts for emancipation, improvement has been opposed by an
increasingly stigmatising rhetoric targeting the most vulnerable women —
teenage mothers, lone mothers, surrogate mothers, disabled mothers, older
mothers, adoptive mothers, migrant or mothers identified in racial terms,
women raising their families in urban or rural poverty, mothers with AIDS,
lesbian or transsexual mothers, sex workers, inmates with children or
mothers whose children are in foster care: each of these figures of
‘inadequate,’ ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘undeserving’ motherhood is held
responsible for her situation. Access to sex education, information on
reproductive rights or structures to address her specific needs are
increasingly restricted and conditional. Traditionally extolled as an
accomplishment in a woman’s life, motherhood is nonetheless equated with a
loss of status or personhood for women when the state or other legal
persons endowed with ethical legitimacy can claim a right to interfere with
their access to sex education, reproductive rights, family benefits,
day-care or parenting choices.

               This conference aims to question the various ways in which
motherhood is judged, how political choices are translated into cultural
representations of mothers as either icons or scapegoats, and how these
representations are received and challenged in a quest for either
conformity or agency.

The following approaches are particularly welcome, whether they address the
USA, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth or the
English-speaking parts of Africa:

-        Representations of mother figures and motherhood in literature,
the arts, and popular culture
-        Representations of motherhood in religious traditions and New
Religious Movements
-        Roles assigned to mother figures in the perpetuation of gender
roles.
-        The evolution of legislation on the age of consent and family
policies since the 19th century
-        Sex education and the prevention of teenage pregnancies
-        Forms of mothering and choices of traditional or alternative
mothering styles
-        Motherhood and racial or ethnic Othering
-        Inmates who are mothers
-        Mothers in the military
-        Motherhood and urban or rural poverty/downward mobility
-        Motherhood and homosexuality
-        Motherhood and transsexuality
-        Motherhood among sex workers
-        Motherhood and social and sanitary norms
-        Motherhood and disability/AIDS/illness
-        Teenage pregnancy
-        Older motherhood
-        Lone motherhood
-        Single motherhood by choice
-        Adoption
-        Surrogate motherhood and ectogenesis
-        Foster care and stigmatisation of ‘inadequate’ parenting
-        Eugenicist undercurrents in scientific and political discourse

300-word abstracts along with a short CV in English should be sent by
September 1, 2016 to Dr. Cécile Coquet-Mokoko (
[log in to unmask]) and Prof. Fabienne Portier-Le Cocq (
[log in to unmask]). Best papers will be published.
The conference will be held at The University of Tours, France, from April
3 to 5, 2017.

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