Calls for Submissions from ARM and Demeter Press

Demeter Press

Mothering and Hip-Hop Culture
Abstracts due by August 1, 2009

Moms Gone Mad: Motherhood as Oppression and Resistance
Deadline for Abstracts: August 15, 2009

South Asian Mothering
Call for Chapters
Deadline for Abstracts: November 1, 2009

ARM Conferences and Panels

Mothering and The Environment;
The Social, The Natural, The Built
October 22-25, 2009
Deadline extended to July 15/09

Embedded Conference
A (M)otherworld is Possible: Three Feminist Visions The Motherhood Movement Matriarchal Studies The Gift Economy

Mothering and Migration:
(Trans)nationalisms, Globalization, and Displacement
February 18-20, 2010

Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother: Theory and Narrative
NEMLA 2010
April 7-11, 2010 (see earlier post)

October 2010
Motherhood and the Economy;
The Economics of Mothering

NEMLA Calls for Submissions about Mothering

41st Anniversary Convention, Montreal, Quebec - Hilton Bonaventure, April 7-11, 2010

The 41st Annual Convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

Abstract Deadline: September 30, 2009

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)


Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother: Theory and Narrative

While previous books and panels have examined being a mother academic from narrative or "lived experience" and others explored mother academics' experiences from a theoretical perspective, this panel will incorporate both narrative and theory. The panel will explore how both research and narrative can inform contemporary understandings of academic motherhood and will strengthen the dialogue among academic motherhood, intellectual ideas, and narrative. Please submit 200-300 word abstracts to D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein at lhallst@bu.edu.

Literary Motherhood in the New World

This panel seeks submissions of 200-400 words which focus on the relationship between a mother and her children and/or the social role of the mother in the New World in both racialized and non-racialized contexts. Submissions from literary works which draw from the New World-North and South American mainland as well as the Caribbean-are welcomed as are works which draw from both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Please send submissions to Kate Caccavaio at caccavai@msu.edu.

The Adoption Memoir

As the forming of families through trans-national adoption has radically increased over the past decade, a new genre of memoir writing has emerged. This panel will examine the Adoption Memoir as a cultural expression of the need to interrogate this new form of family making, and its impact on the family members and society. Papers can be on single or selections of memoirs, from all viewpoints (adoptive parent, adoptee and birthparents). Literary, socio-political, psychoanalytic, feminist and global-economic approaches welcome. Lindsay Davies at lindsay.davies@nyu.edu

Mothers Linked World Wide by Rebekah Spicuglia

Beginning December 1, 2008, mothers around the world have had access to the first global consortium of motherhood organizations. Marking ten years after the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) was founded, mothers’ organizations in North America and around the world came together in October for the ARM annual Toronto conference on motherhood and emerged as an International Motherhood Network (IMN).

My husband, Marcarthur Baralla (Defendshee Production), and I filmed the conference and interviewed more than 30 women for a documentary—“The Motherhood Movement: You Say You Want a Revolution”—being produced for the Museum of Motherhood. Exploring the movement’s evolution over the last 50 years, the documentary will be a highlight of the museum, which was established online in 2003 and will soon be a physical museum located in Seneca Falls—home of the first U.S. women’s rights convention in 1848. The museum, founded by ARM and the Motherhood Foundation, is a long overdue project to honor the achievements of mothers . . .

Read the rest of the article

I didn’t get it. I have been participating in the Lowcountry Writing Project for two years now. I have been a student and a teacher, a guest speaker and an organizer. But I just didn’t get it.

Standing in a huge ballroom filled with Writing Project participants from all over the country finally showed me what I was missing. My involvement with LWP makes me part of something larger, deeper, and grander than I had imagined. As I heard speakers explain the state of the organization, cheer on the work of everyone in the room, and describe their own experiences as writers/speakers and teachers of writers/speakers, I saw the breadth and scope of the National Writing Project. I realized what I saw as a noble but small effort to show teachers and students the transformational power of writing was actually part of a long-standing and well-established national movement. Suddenly, I saw that we can change the world.

What did we do there? I participated in panels, heard speakers, and talked with colleagues from Alaska and Arkansas and West Virginia and so many places. I went on my first writing marathon in a place other than Charleston, which showed me once again that the best way to learn a place is to write about it. The marathon sparked a new approach to a book project I had left behind – and helped me to once again feel (rather than merely discuss) the power of writing to transform. I loved being there, and I loved sharing that time with all those amazing writers and teachers of writing.

You can read about the conference here

Will I go back? You bet. And I encourage all of you writers and teachers to consider going next year, too.

I spoke at the Association for Research on Mothering Conference in October, and I met with other mother organizations to talk about creating a network. We thought, "If we join all of our readers, participants, and activists together, what a huge network of mothers this will be!" Thus, Literary Mama became one of the the founding members of a new International Mothers Network. Check it out, and sign up your mother organization!

This conference was the first that I have attended in many years. Being a single mom of a young child and trying to attend conferences helped knock me out of the college teaching profession. But now, my daughter is independent enough to spend a weekend with grandma, and that makes travel so much easier.

What a conference, too. Great panels, interesting speakers, and engaging meetings. It was well worth it. I had lunch with Lisa Chiau, who will now be joining us as at Literary Mama. I also had lunch with Amy Anderson from MamaZine and Jennifer Niesslein from Brain, Child. I had drinks with Joy Rose from MamapaIooza and met so many wonderful people who I had long wanted to see face-to-face. Well worth the slight anxiousness about international travel away from my daughter!