[Candrama] Rethinking Motherhood CFP

[Sheila Rabillard]

 (Apologies for duplicate posting)



 CFP:  For an edited collection of scholarly articles



Rethinking Motherhood in the Twenty-First Century: Perspectives on Canadian Theatre

Sheila Rabillard, Associate professor, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC (rabillar at uvic.ca)

Karen Bamford, Professor, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB (kbamford at mta.ca)



Rationale:

Urgent and essential questioning surrounds maternity in the 21st century. In Sally Rooney’s words, the most serious philosophical problem today could be “to decide whether or not a life is worth bringing into existence.” We plan a collection of essays that explores the contributions of 21st-century Canadian theatre and theatre scholarship to current conversations about maternity as individual experience or collective endeavor.



Developments in theatre’s sister arts invite us to ask how theatre re-conceives and re-embodies mothering. Novels interrogating maternity include Heti, Motherhood (2018); Greengrass, Sight (2018); Slimani, The Perfect Nanny (2016). Visual art adds to the conversation: witness the exhibition “New Maternalisms”(2016) as well as graphic narratives like Leavitt’s Tangles (2010). The politics of our time lends urgency to such re-thinking. Right-wing movements advocate a return to prior versions of maternity; the Anthropocene era spurs an ethics of reproduction; responses to the legacy of residential schools require greater understanding of what Patricia Hill Collins terms “motherwork.” In the midst of urgency, recent scholarly developments provide theoretical support for thoughtful conversation: see, for example, Ahmed (2004) on affective labour; Badinter (2010) on varied concepts and valuations of mothering; Ruddick (2009); and Rose (2018).



The evidence of recent drama suggests there is a body of exciting work for this collection to consider. On the Canadian stage, for example, Natrass’s Mamahood (2018) embraces maternity as personal adventure; MacLeod’s Gracie (2017) presents a girl groomed to serve her community as child-bearer; Clements’s Missing (2017) dramatizes maternity lost as a consequence of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. We anticipate intriguing answers to the question: ‘How does theatre contribute to re-thinking maternity for the 21st century?’



Proposals:

We seek proposals for scholarly articles that address the rethinking of motherhood in the context of theatre in Canada. Essays are invited to comprise an edited collection focused on theatre in Canada that contributes to ongoing cultural conversations concerning changing concepts, imaginings, valuations, and potentials of maternity. Articles may address one or several plays or performances; they may emphasize mothering as individual and/or as collective endeavor; they may consider mothering in relation to theatrical practices and professions; they may propose a 21st century revaluation of earlier works. We welcome a range of approaches from established and emerging scholars. Our hope is that all chapters in the book will be crucial reading for scholars while also being accessible to students at all levels. We require original research that has not been previously published.



Potential topics or perspectives include (but are not limited to):

--embodiments of mothering

--Collins’s “motherwork”—Indigenous theatres and the present political moment

--motherhood in theatre in relation to motherhood in other genres or media

--maternal affective labour

--rethinking contemporary motherhood and the legacies of theatre history

--Badinter’s analysis of multiple, co-existing concepts of motherhood: theatrical obstacle or opportunity?

--motherhood as opening to other realms

--mothering in the Anthropocene

--mothering in /and theatre: parenthood, mentoring

--artistic production and maternal reproduction

--mothering for the future (contra Edelman)

--omissions from the conversation: who is not included in theatrical rethinking of motherhood?



Proposals of roughly 300 words should be sent to both editors by Sept. 1, 2019.

Completed papers (6,000-7,000 words) by May 15, 2020.





Sheila Rabillard
Associate professor
Department of English
Box 1700 STN CSC
University of Victoria
Victoria BC Canada V8W 2Y2
250-721-7256
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