CONGRATS TO ALL WHO ATTENDED! IT WAS A WONDERFUL WEEKEND…. If you are interested in connecting again soon, please consider joining us in St. Petersburg, Feb 10-11 for the Mothering From The Margins Conference with M.O.M. [LINK]
Martha Joy Rose attends MIRCI Gala Conference in Toronto on behalf of M.O.M. She will be discussing music, activism, and scholarship in the arena of mother studies. See full conference schedule here [LINK]
This is an international conference on “Mothers, Mothering, Motherhood in Today’s World: Experience, Identity, Agency, and Institution,” with an embedded conference focusing on “Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in Canada.” The event will celebrate Canada’s 150th year in 2017 by examining why mothers, arguably more so than women in general, remain disempowered despite forty years of feminism. The conference also celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), its 50th conference, and the 10th anniversary of Demeter Press.
Motherhood is the unfinished business of feminism. Motherhood scholars argue that motherhood, as it is currently perceived and practiced in patriarchal societies, is disempowering, if not oppressive, for a multitude of reasons: the societal devaluation of motherwork, the endless tasks of privatized mothering, the incompatibility of waged work and care work, and the impossible standards of idealized motherhood. Many of the problems facing mothers—whether social, economic, political, cultural, or psychological—are specific to their role and identity as mothers. What is needed therefore is matricentric feminism: a feminism that is fashioned from and for women’s particular identity and their work as mothers. This conference positions mothers’ needs and concerns as the starting point for a new politic and theory of feminism to empower mothers in Canada and around the world and explores what mothers in the 21st century need to adequately care for their children while living full and purposeful lives. Over the last forty years, motherhood research has focused on the oppressive and empowering dimensions of mothering and the complex relationship between the two. Stemming from the above distinction, the conference will examine 21st century motherhood under four interconnected themes of inquiry: motherhood as experience, identity, agency, and institution.
The three-day conference features 7 plenary panels with leading scholars on motherhood from Canada and the United States and a keynote address by internationally acclaimed New Zealand writer Marilyn Waring. The conference considers what changes are needed in public-social policy, health, education, the workplace, the family, and the arts to effect full and lasting gender equality for mothers in the 21st century.
More on Facebook [LINK]
info@motherhoodinitiative.org