THREE New CFP's from Demeter Press (Disabled Mothers, Black Mothers and Gender in Mothering)

Get your typing fingers ready because here are three new Calls for Papers from Demeter Press! All three are for edited collections.

CFPs are listed in order of abstract deadlines. So grab your calendar and thinking hat.




1) Disabled Mothers*

Co-Editors: Gloria Filax and Dena Taylor

Publication Date: 2014

While there are several books on raising children with disabilities, the literature is scant on experiences of disabled women who are raising children OR the experiences of those parented by a woman with disabilities. Bringing together disability with mothering has the potential to challenge dominant narratives of both mothering AND disability. Noticing dominant ideas, meanings, and/or stories/narratives (normative discourses) regarding both 'mothering' and 'disability' expose the limits beyond which disabled mothers live their daily lives.

The goal of this edited collection is to add to literatures on mothering and disability through providing stories by disabled mothers or their children as well as chapters of scholarly research and theorizing. We intend that both stories and research in this collection will raise critical questions about the social and cultural meanings of disability and mothering. Whether a birth mother, an adoptive mother, a foster mother, a co-mother, someone mothered by a disabled woman, or someone whose research explores disabled mothering, we invite you to submit to this collection.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:


How are disabled women discouraged from having children? How does the medical model of disability shape the meanings assigned to disabled mothers? How do chronic illnesses affect mothering? Are disabled mothers healthy mothers? How do the social and cultural models of disability shape how we understand disabled mothers and mothering? Are disabled mothers oppressed? How do issues of race, class, and sexuality affect disabled mothers and their families? Should disabled mothers 'pass' as normal? How are pregnancy and birth experiences shaped by disability? How do children experience and understand a disabled mother? What support is needed and received by disabled mothers? How does the built environment, both public and private, shape the experiences of disabled mothers? What kinds of issues are there with children's schools, health professionals and/or children's attitudes? What form, if any, does social and political activism take? Do legal remedies work to assist disabled mothers (for example, disability as a protected category in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the Americans with Disabilities Act)? How does a mother's disability expose the expectations of mothering? How does a mother's disability expose the assumptions about disability? How is society disabling of mothering? How can we 'do' disabled mothering differently?

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be 250 words. Please also include a brief biography (50 words) with citizenship. Please send to gfilax@shaw.ca and detaylor@cabrillo.edu

Deadline for Abstracts is December 31, 2011

Accepted papers of 4000-5000 words (15-20 pages) will be due October 15, 2012 and should conform to MLA citation format.

*Tanya Titchkosky argues that referring to "disabled people" is preferable because it emphasizes disablement as a social process that prevents certain people from access to resources and goods available to others. "People with disabilities" implies that disability is not part of what it is to be a person and leaves disability as a problem. We agree with Titchkosky and therefore our choice of the title for this collection is "Disabled Mothers". (See Tanya Titchkosky (2003) Disability, Self, and Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, chapter 2).

2) Chasing Rainbows:
Exploring Gender Fluid Mothering Practices

Co-Editors: Fiona Green and May Friedman

Publication Date: Early 2014

Feminist mothering creates unique challenges. Mothers may struggle with shifts in their own subjectivity and the peculiar conjoinment of parenthood. As women experience the unique powerlessness of motherhood, they also hold the uncomfortable power of acting as agents of socialization and social control over their children. While this power is evident in many areas of parenting, it is especially keenly experienced in the area of gender and mothering.

Feminist mothers may attempt to resist gender binaries; they may submit to them while attempting to foster critical dialogue; they may struggle with the display of their own femininity or, for some, its perceived lack. For some parents a dialogue about gender normativity may be inspired by gender-diverse behavior on the part of their own children, while others may parent children who happily submit to the mainstream and query the need for gender questioning. Chasing Rainbows: Exploring Gender Fluid Mothering Practices attempts to cast a lens on the messy and convoluted ways that feminist parents approach parenting their children in gender aware and gender fluid ways. The collection aims to draw together scholars, activists and community members to open a conversation about the challenges of exploring and maintaining an awareness of gender while parenting in a highly gender normative world. Because gender is expressed and performed differently in various places and spaces, and across different ages, this collection welcomes submissions from feminist parents and from the widest range of experiences.

Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to:

Cross-cultural, historical, transnational, comparative and interdisciplinary modes of inquiry and analysis
Gender fluid parenting within and beyond cisgendered mother and father parenting roles
The challenges and gifts of affective/psychic/embodied transformations of gender fluid parenting
Media representations and spectacles of gender fluid/diverse/variant families
Alternative visual and artistic depictions of gender variant socialization in/of family life
Racialization of gender variant parenting/family discourses
Gender diverse self-help parenting texts
Community based gender variant/diverse/fluid family activism and organizing
Commodification of gender fluid mothering and gender variant families
Practical and theoretical ways of complicating and shaping fluid gender expression
Broad social and historical forces that impact what can be done and said in the name of gender diverse families

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be 250 words. Please also include a brief biography (50 words) with citizenship.

Please send to: may.friedman@ryerson.ca, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St.,
Toronto, ON M5B 2K3 and f.green@uwinnipeg.ca, University of Winnipeg,
515 Portage Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3T 1M5.

Deadline for Abstracts is March 15, 2012 & Deadline for Acceptances is May 15, 2012.

Accepted papers not exceeding 15 pages (3750 words) will be due February 15, 2013

and should be formatted according to MLA guidelines. The book is to have 50 percent
Canadian content, so Canadian contributors are especially encouraged to submit.


3) Patricia Hill Collins: Reconceiving Black Motherhood
Editor: Kaila Adia Story

Publication Date: 2014

In 1965 a then sociologist and eventual US senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan released his report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The report concluded that the Black family existed as a tangle of pathology, which struggled to make progress toward economic and political equality due to its deterioration of the concept of the nuclear family. Since the release of the report forty-six years ago, many Black feminists and motherhood scholars have elucidated the ways in which Moynihan's conception of the Black family, in particular the Black mother, was couched in racist, classist, and sexist notions of the family and the institution of motherhood. One such Black Feminist scholar was Patricia Hill Collins. In the spirit of Demeter Press and the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), this anthology seeks to discuss the impact/influence/ and/or importance of Patricia Hill Collins on motherhood research. The goal of this edited collection is to add to the existing literature on Black Motherhood and the Black Family. In addition, this collection will raise critical questions about the social and cultural meanings of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and mothering.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

How has Hill Collins' work disrupted or undone previous work about motherhood? How has Hill Collins' work paved the way to understanding the institution of Black motherhood? How has Hill Collins discussed conceptions of Motherhood and agency in her work? What has Hill Collins' work done to reconceptualize our ideas of Black mothers and fathers? Which aspect of Hill Collins' work speaks to sexuality and conceptions of parenting? How can we unpack Hill Collins' conception of "real mothers"? How does Hill Collins' notion of the "new racism" relate to the institution of mothering? What does Hill Collins' work do to move conversations of national identity and race forward? How has Hill Collins' work allowed other motherhood scholars to rewrite the constellation of motherhood?

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit abstracts of 250 words and include your 50 word bio and citizenship

Deadline for Abstracts is April 1, 2012

Please send submissions and inquiries directly to:

Kaila Adia Story: doctressstory@gmail.com

Disclosure: I am getting a complementary membership to MIRCI and subscription to the journal in return for posting these updates. It is, however, something I would have agreed to do for free because I think their work is so wonderful.