Motherhood in Literature and Culture : Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe
- Submitting institution
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Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
- Unit of assessment
- 26 - Modern Languages and Linguistics
- Output identifier
- 28054942
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.4324/9781315626581
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 978-1-138-64817-3
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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4
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This book (296 pp.) is part of the Routledge series ‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature’ and was jointly edited by two Royal Holloway colleagues, Jeremiah and Lee Six, with three other editors, who together formed a cross-disciplinary team with expertise across several European languages. The volume includes an introduction (14 pp.), to which Jeremiah and Lee Six contributed 40%, and explores cultural representations of motherhood in contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK. Jeremiah and Lee Six also each contributed a chapter: respectively ‘Broken Nights, Shattered Selves: Maternal Ambivalence and the Ethics of Interruption in Sarah Moss’s Novel Night Waking’ (13 pp.) and ‘Nuria C. Botey’s Short Story 'Viviendo con el tío Roy': Motherhood and Risk Assessment under Duress’ (13 pp.). The volume considers how such representations affect the ways in which different individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it also includes essays on philosophy, art, social policy, and film. The book's contention is that, through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and the study of literature have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative responses to complex problems and experiences. The volume covers topics including: depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the relationship between mothering and citizenship; the shaping of policy imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult realities of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, analyses shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and embodiment, explores some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts in which mothering takes place, and asks searching questions about what it means to be a 'mother' in Europe today.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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