Motherhood in Literature and Culture

<p>Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cultural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and it considers how such representations affect the ways in which different individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it also includes essays that examine representations of motherhood in philosophy, art, social policy, and film. The book’s driving contention is that, through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and the study of literature have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative responses to complex problems and experiences. This is demonstrated throughout the volume, which covers a range of topics including: discursive and visual depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the relationship between mothering and citizenship; the shaping of policy imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult realities of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, as the authors map and analyse shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and embodiment, explore some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts in which mothering takes place, and ask searching questions about what it means to be a ‘mother’ in Europe today. It will be of interest not only to those working in gender, women’s and feminist studies, but also to scholars in literary and cultural studies, and those researching in sociology, criminology, politics, psychology, medical ethics, midwifery, and related fields.</p> <p>CONTENTS</p><p></p><p>Acknowledgements</p><p></p><p>Foreword<em>, Lisa Baraitser</em></p><p>Introduction: Motherhood in Literature and Culture</p><p></p><p><em>Gill Rye, Victoria Browne, Adalgisa Giorgio, Emily Jeremiah, and Abigail Lee Six</em></p><p>Part I: Pregnancy and Birth</p><p></p><p>1: Birth Fear and the Subjugation of Women’s Strength: Towards a Broader Conceptualization of Femininity in Birth </p><p>Susannah Sweetman</p><p></p><p>2: The Temporalities of Pregnancy: On Contingency, Loss, and Waiting </p><p>Victoria Browne</p><p></p><p>3: An (Un)Familiar Story: Exploring Ultrasound Poems by Contemporary British Women Writers</p><p>Emily Blewitt</p><p></p><p>4: Birthing Tales and Collective Memory in Recent French Fiction</p><p>Valerie Worth-Stylianou</p><p></p><p>5: Natality, Materiality, Maternity: The Sublime and the Grotesque in Contemporary Sculpture</p><p>Christine Battersby</p><p>Part II: Generation and Relation</p><p></p><p>6: Erasing Mother, Seeking Father: Biotechnological Interventions, Anxieties over Motherhood, and Donor Offspring’s Narratives of Self</p><p>Gabriele Griffin</p><p></p><p>7: Mums or Dads? Lesbian Mothers in France </p><p>Gill Rye</p><p></p><p>8: The Kinning of the Transnationally Adopted Child in Contemporary Norway</p><p>Signe Howell</p><p></p><p>9: Ties that Bind in Tanja Dückers’s Novel <i>Himmelskörper</i>: History, Memory, and Making Sense of Motherhood in Twenty-First-Century Germany</p><p>Katherine Stone</p><p></p><p>10: Matrixial Creativity and the Wit(h)nessing of Trauma: Reconnecting Mothers and Daughters in Marosia Castaldi’s Novel <i>Dentro le mie mani le tue: Tetralogia di Nightwater</i></p><p></p><p>Adalgisa Giorgo</p><p>Part III: Experience and Affect</p><p></p><p>11: Publicizing Vulnerability: Motherhood and Affect in Joanna Rajkowska’s Post-2011 Art </p><p>Justyna Wierzchowska</p><p></p><p>12: Present and Obscured: Disabled Women as Mothers in Social Policy</p><p>Harriet Clarke</p><p></p><p>13: Nuria C. Botey’s Short Story 'Viviendo con el tío Roy': Motherhood and Risk Assessment under Duress </p><p>Abigail Lee Six</p><p></p><p>14: Broken Nights, Shattered Selves: Maternal Ambivalence and the Ethics of Interruption in Sarah Moss’s Novel <i>Night Waking</i></p><p></p><p>Emily Jeremiah</p><p></p><p>15: Uncertain Mothers: Maternal Ambivalence in Alina Marazzi’s Film <i>Tutto parla di te</i></p><p></p><p>Claudia Karagoz</p><p></p><p>16: 'How to Say Hello to the Sea': Literary Perspectives on Medico-Legal Narratives of Maternal Filicide</p><p>Ruth Cain</p><p>Part IV: Reflections</p><p></p><p>17: To Be or Not To Be (a Mother): Telling Academic and Personal Stories of Mothers and Others</p><p>Gayle Letherby</p><p></p><p>18: Last Will and Testament: Potatoes, Love, and Poetry</p><p></p><p><em>Ana Luisa Amaral</em></p><p></p><p>List of Contributors</p><p></p><p>Index</p>