Call for Papers
First Annual – I 
M.O.M. Conference – St. Petersburg, FLA
Feb. 10-11th, 2017
SUBMIT TO PRESENT AT THE 2017 CONFERENCE/ submit your abstract for JourMS
“Mothering from the Margins”
Calling all social scientists, women’s, sexuality, and gender scholars, masculinity studies scholars, motherhood and fatherhood scholars, artists, performers, and those interested in caregiving and motherwork more generally for a creative and critical dialogue around the concept of “mothering from the margins.”
Each individual and family engages in care practices from a specific social location, made up of a multitude of intersecting and co-constituting identities that are accompanied by significant privileges and oppressions. For many, motherwork takes place from the margins of society, where individuals and kin networks that do not conform to dominant family structures find themselves. We aim to consider the experiences of oppression, the possibilities for empowerment, and the impacts on individuals, families, and children when people mother from the margins. Of special interest are the following topics: LGBTQ+, queer, and alternative kinship structures; teen and young adult parents; racial minority and multiracial families; transnational caregiving and undocumented families; motherwork from and within marginalized faith communities; adoptive, blended, and multi-household families; caring for or as differently-abled or neuro-atypical; single mothers; low-income mothers and families using public assistance; conceiving and parenting after miscarriage or child death; and negotiating in/fertility; as well as those who do not identify with normative-retro-patriarchal versions of mothering and caregiving.
What are some of the ways mothers can speak up, speak out, and perform with ferocity?
We welcome submissions from scholars, students, activists, artists, community agencies, service providers, journalists, mothers and others who work or research in this area. Cross-cultural, historical, and comparative work is encouraged. We also encourage a variety of types of submissions including individual academic papers from all disciplines, proposals for panels, creative submissions, performances, storytelling, visual arts, film, music, audio, and other alternative formats.
All submissions for this conference should be considered for submission to the first edition of the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS), an academic, peer reviewed journal devoted to Mother Studies, due out in 2016. You may also submit for the conference only if you wish. Abstracts must include a title and 50-150 words for individual papers, panels, and other submission types (e.g. performance, media, music). Go to MOMmuseum.org and look for the “Conference Submissions” tab.
Anyone may submit a paper but articles must be of a scholarly nature, and should be 15-20 pages (maximum 4,000 words) including references. Many of our authors are published writers with popular books. Journalistic papers are encouraged. We value intellectual accessibility as much as we value research and rigor. JourMS aims to cultivate a wide readership with authors who can relay meaningful information, while addressing important issues, in order to establish JourMS as the preeminent contributor of content in the field of Mother Studies. All text should be in APA style and submitted in Word Doc. Submissions accepted by SocMS members or students enrolled in Mother Studies classes within the last 6 months please. You must be a member to submit.
- JourMS - 