New Conference CFP: Mothering and Reproduction

CALL FOR PAPERS
Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)

MOTHERING AND REPRODUCTION
featuring an embedded conference on the topic of
MOTHERING, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

October 18-20, 2012, Toronto, ON, Canada

We welcome submissions from scholars, students, artists, mothers and others who research in this area. Cross-cultural and comparative work is encouraged. We are open to a variety of submissions including academic papers from all disciplines and creative submissions including visual art, literature, and performance art.

This conference will examine the ethical, political, social/cultural, economic, historical, religious, spiritual, and psychological dimensions of reproduction and mothering. While the larger conference will be broad in its interpretation and engagement with the subject of 'Mothering and Reproduction', an embedded conference will be specific to exploring how mothers' decisions and experiences of reproduction and mothering have been/are influenced by science and technology. This Call For Papers is for both the larger conference, and the embedded one. Please feel free to submit to either, without necessarily specifying which you have in mind for your abstract/presentation.

Topics may include but are not restricted to:
Bioethics and fertility; abortion, birth control and assisted fertility in a cross cultural context; reproductive technologies and the interplay of religion; mothering in families of high order multiple births; mothering on the blogosphere; queer engagements with reproduction; motherhood and the technological womb; modern childbirth and maternity care; (mis)educative experiences teaching and learning about menstruation and reproduction; re/productive roles mothers play in de/constructing embodied understandings of reproduction; surviving tramautic birth experiences; mothers in academe/research; mothering and the workplace, how technology permeates the work/home barrier; attachment with adopted and biological children; birth plans; how science and technology inform social justice issues; assisted reproductive technologies, state policy, and federalism's impacts on women in the United States and around the world; reproductive decisions and a politics of location; impact of social media on opinions regarding reproduction; "mothering" from a distance; the experience of egg donation; mothers' changing relationship with "the experts" regarding birthing, infant care in the age of infectious diseases, baby books and birth control; reproductive rights and wrongs, including rise of contraceptive technology alongside state-coerced sterilization; mothering in the Information Age; maternalist political rhetoric in favor of labor rights; mothering bodies; pre and postnatal bodies and reconstructive surgery; eating disorders and reproduction; reproductive consciousness and politics of reproduction; outcomes associated with scientific/technological intervention; outsourcing of reproduction to developing nations; maternal and erotic/maternal eroticism; history of reproductive technologies; Indigenous mothers and mothering; cross-cultural perspectives on reproduction including reproductive technologies.

Keynote Speakers TBA

If you are interested in being considered as a presenter, please send a 250 word abstract and a 50-word bio by March 15th, 2011 to info@motherhoodinitiative.org

** TO SUBMIT AN ABSTRACT FOR THIS CONFERENCE, ONE MUST BE A MEMBER OF MIRCI : http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/membership.html