Maternal Geographies

Mothering In and Out of Place This collection broaches the intersections of critical motherhood studies and feminist geography. Contributors demonstrate that an important dimension of the social construction of motherhood is how mothering happens in space and place, leading to the articulation of diverse maternal geographies. Through 16 concise chapters divided into three thematic sections, the contributors provide an account of motherhood and mothering as spatial practices that are embedded in relations of power across time and place. While some contributors explore how dominant discourses of motherhood seek to keep mothers in their place, others take up the notion of maternal geographies as productive in their own right and follow their subjects as they create a new sense of place. Collectively, the authors demonstrate that mothers are produced and regulated as subjects in relation to space and place, and also that practices of mothering produce spatial relationships. The scholars gathered here bring interdisciplinary approaches from diverse fields including women’s and gender studies, sexuality studies, social geography, sociology, anthropology, fine arts, literary studies, and film studies. Chapters include submissions from authors who reference the geographical contexts of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Eastern Caribbean, Great Britain, Japan and Samoa, and the United States. “Maternal Geographies is an accessible collection that brings together a diverse set of arguments via engaging styles of presentations. The Editors position the contributions within an interdisciplinary backdrop through which authors detail the spatialities of mothering. Instead of the well-worn trope of mothers facing challenges, each of the authors foregrounds mothering as a process, bringing refreshingly neoteric angles to understanding what mothering is all about. Contributions provide personal accounts of sculpting spaces for conventionally understood as ‘out of place’ mothering, offer novel readings of art forms that bring a sensitivity to the complexity of the lives of women who mother, and advance methodological queries into embodied research practices that extend well beyond the research topic. This reorientation away from the idealizations of mother and motherhood toward mothering as a process will no doubt affect the way researchers approach mothers and motherhood through the practices of mothering.” - Professor Pamela Moss, University of Victoria