[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Mothers and Motherhood as National Allegory (6/15/06; collection)

[Nazan Haydari]

FP:  Mothers and Motherhood as National Allegory
(06/15/2006;
collection)

For an Edited Collection tentatively entitled
(M)Othering the Nation:
Constructing and Resisting Regional and National
Allegories Through the
Maternal Body, edited by Lisa Bernstein and Pamela
Monaco.

At the invitation of Cambridge Scholars Press, we are
submitting for
publication an anthology of critical scholarly essays
on the topic of
motherhood and the maternal body reconfigured as
motherland.  The
precise focus of this study is the multiple ways in
which mothers and
motherhood have figured as tropes of nation formation
and of national
development and/or disintegration.  Essays are
welcomed from all
linguistic, historical, national, and cultural
contexts, that address
ways in which literature, performance, and visual arts
have used the
figure of the mother to represent, deconstruct, and/or
transgress
geographical, cultural, and ideological nations and
regions.

Responding to Frederic Jameson's contention in "Third
World Literature
in the Era of Multinational Capitalism" that all
"Third World"
literatures constitute allegories of nation-formation,
Jean Franco, in
"The Nation as Imagined Community," and Aijaz Ahmad,
in "In Theory:
Nations, Classes, and Literatures," critique
assumptions and
generalizations concerning "Third World Literature,"
and question the
viability of "the nation" as a construct.  This
anthology intends both
to insert itself into this conversation, and to
address the impact of
allegorical representations of "the mother" on real
women's lives.

This volume will discuss mythical and historical
narratives that 
connect
the mother's body and motherhood to the ideas of
community, region, and
nation.  Papers might examine the images and uses of
marginalized 
women,
such as mothers of minority racial and ethnic status
and lesbian
mothers.  Of particular interest is the role of
literature and cultural
institutions in colonial, anti-colonial, and
post-colonial
representations and contestations of the nation as
real and imagined
community.  Proposals may draw on recent social,
political, and 
cultural
theory to explore ways in which literature and society
have used the
figure of the mother to represent nationhood and to
construct and
transform notions of national identity, or
alternatively, to envision
new and different concepts of community and social
space beyond the 
idea
of the nation-state.

Abstracts (400-500 words) due June 15, 2006. 
Acceptances will be made
by the end of August 1.  Accepted papers of
approximately 15-20 pages
will be due December 15, 2006.

Please send any inquiries and abstracts via email to
both Lisa 
Bernstein
(lbernstein at umuc.edu) and Pamela Monaco (pmonaco at umuc.edu).

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