M/othering and a Bodied Curriculum

Call for submissions: M/othering and a Bodied Curriculum

Co-edited by Stephanie Springgay and Debra Freedman

A bodied curriculum attends to the relational, social, and ethical implications of “being-with” other bodies differently and to the different knowledges such bodily encounters produce. It is a practice of being oriented to others, to touch, to reflect, and to dwell with others relationally. Re-conceptualize m/othering as a bodied curriculum opens up maternity to the in-between of corporeality, materiality, and difference.

While much of Western thought has celebrated the splitting of women’s identity into “mother” or “other”—the perception that women cannot be both—re-thinking mothering from the perspective of “performativity” recognizes the relationality between mother and other. When mothering is conceived of as performative it becomes an active practice de-centering the notion that motherhood is passive and static. Perforamtivity shifts our attention from motherhood as biological, selfless, and existing prior to culture, to a practice that is always incomplete, indeterminable, and vulnerable. A relational understanding of m/othering opens up the possibility of an ethical form of exchange between self and other and allows us to understand the maternal subject as engaged in a relational process which is never complete and which demands reiteration. M/othering as performance contains the potential for a disruption of dominant discourses on maternity and thereby makes room for maternal agency. This re-conceptualization of m/othering refuses to be split, while also remaining ambivalent.

Submissions are sought from scholars interested in the intersections between mothering, educational scholarship, and identities of difference. The following topics among others are encouraged: readings of the maternal body in teaching and learning; mothering as curriculum; historical examinations of teacher-mothers; understandings, experiences, and practices of mothering that de-centre the western norms of motherhood; artistic documentation of aspects of motherhood; mothering and popular culture; the embrace of motherhood in education; the problematics of motherhood as a theme; the challenges of maintaining a balance between motherhood and teaching/research; making motherhood a “legitimate” topic for research; issues of motherhood and family leave in the workplace; mothering “success stories” in the face of adversity.

If you are interested in submitting to this co-edited collection please send an abstract by October 15, 2008.

Submit to Stephanie Springgay, sss23@psu.edu.
Subject line: M/othering.

Deadline for initial abstract: October 15, 2008. Include: Include: Title, Abstract (500-800 words), Name, Institutional Affiliation, Address, Phone, Email Address, and Brief Bio (50 words). Arts-based submissions are also welcome.

Stephanie Springgay and Debra Freedman are co-editors of the book Curriculum and the Cultural Body, Peter Lang 2007. Dr. Springgay is an Assistant professor of Art Education and Women’s Studies, Penn State University and Dr. Freedman is an Associate Professor at Ball State University.
Stephanie Springgay, Ph.D