Performing Maternities

Political, Social and Feminist Enquiry

Edited by Kate Aughterson, Jess Moriarty

Publication date:

30 August 2024

Publisher

Intellect Books

Dimensions:

244x170mm
7x10"

ISBN-13: 9781835950166

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Performing Maternities is a collection of essays, creative work, images and scripts which emerged out of an online international symposium held at Brighton University in November 2020. Collectively, the contributors challenge, celebrate and share the normative, the queer, the transgressive, the joy and the pain of performing maternity. The book asks key questions about the construction of maternal identities and mythologies in the contemporary world, the ways these impact on individuals in different social, economic and sexual identities, and the ways in which - as mothers, writers, artists, parents and grandparents -we can challenge and address those identities.

List of Figures
Introduction – Kate Aughterson

1. Maternal Performance: Relations and Embodiments – Lena Šimic and Emily Underwood-Lee
2. Experiencing and Knowing from a Mother/Child ‘Us’ – Ariel Moy
3. Still Mothering: Reflections on Life, Death, and Love through the Eyes of Bereaved Mothers – Abby Arnold-Patti
4. Mothering in the Peripheries: An Autoethnographic Account of the Challenging Matrescence of a Neurodivergent Woman – Claire Robinson
5. Tensions of Maternity – Steve Ryder and Diana Denton
6. Remember Me? Creative Conversations with Clothes – Jenni Cresswell
7. How to Tell a Tricky Story about Birth Trauma: Transforming My Lived Experience into a Mythical Epic – Michelle Hall and Teresa Izzard
8. Rhetorical Uteri: A Comparative Visual Analysis of Next Nature Network’s ‘First Artificial Womb for Humans’ and Ani Liu’s The Surrogacy – Yvette Chairez
9. Seeds from My Grandmother’s Womb – Suzi Bamblett
10. Delivering across Geographies: How Faith, Age, Friends, and Space Carry Birthing – Noor Ali
11. ‘These Nipples Are Wasted!’ – Chan-hyo Jeong
12. Macomère Narratives: Mothering in Higher Education – Janice B. Fournillier
13. Bitter-Sweet Embrace: Documentary Film of Artist-Clinician Sophia Xeros-Constantinides Presenting Her Postgraduate Fine Art Exhibition Exploring the Darker Side of Motherhood – Sophia Xeros-Constantinides
14. Comadreando: Entangling the Web of Our Lives – Freyca Calderon-Berumen and Karla O’Donald
15. Interrogating Constructions of Good/Bad Mothers through Popular Spanish Culture: The Case of Concha Piquer (1908–90) – Mercedes Carbayo-Abengózar
16. Looking for Laura: The Generational Transmission of Sexuality – Valerie Walkerdine
17. Maternal Bodies in the Garden: Transit Spaces – Ruchika Wason Singh

Notes on Contributors