The JourMS (Journal of Mother Studies) is a peer reviewed, international, interdisciplinary, open-access, digital humanities hybrid project. 

The Journal solicits submissions from the Interdisciplinary Humanities as defined by the arts, history, culture, the social sciences, women’s and gender studies, literary studies, anthropology, the folkloric, psychology, the digital humanities, and media studies. We encourage dialogue between varying fields and welcome feminist critiques of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, technology, media, public heath, and nation. The Journal will also features book reviews about forthcoming works.

Mothers are defined as the individuals engaged in mothering actions (or individuals linked by genetics) See more about our definitions here.

The journal was founded on digital humanities theory and praxis as a thesis project by Martha Joy Rose at CUNY, The Graduate Center (2015) for the purposes of exploring and disseminating information about the field of Mother Studies through the Museum of Motherhood.  The journal publishes interdisciplinary scholarship on mothers, mothering, and motherhood as broadly construed. Read more about the process of creating the journal here. final thesis project at CUNY; The Graduate Center.

The content is free and open-sourced, non-exclusive, but requires citations. The Journal invites collaboration and encourages wide discussion of the topics presented. In coming months we hope to install CommentPress to this site, so that individuals many contribute and comment directly on the text. In the meantime, you can submit your thoughts below and they will be posted on the Motheristing Blog. (Coming soon). See some of my process blogs and read more about my “Theory.”

The Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS) encourages an exploration into interpretations (external and internal) as well as the performance of everyday life from the m/otherness perspective. This is the relational/connected/disconnected state that includes mother identity, and the ways in which mothering is enacted; socially, culturally, and politically. These are all key to constructing a lens from which we might collectively interpret mothers, motherhood, and mothering.

*Key to the theory of Mother Studies is the necessity of asking, how does m/otherness; one who is part of you, connected to you; or you; who are part of another, or intrinsically connected to another; genetically, through caregiving, or by association— motivate action in a world conceived by relation as opposed to alienation which historically has been shaped by external, institutionalized, and hierarchical constructions.

Academic courses in Mother Studies pull from sociology, history, literature, popular culture, anthropology, gender studies, media studies, economics, feminist studies and psychology, and focus on procreation, birth, caregiving, mothering, fathering, parenting, families, maternal health, grief and loss, as well as reproductive identity, inclusive of all. Feminist perspectives, issues of adult children, surrogacy, adoption, other-mothers, and non-parent issues as well as social and political policies ensure a diverse and comprehensive curriculum.

Mother Studies is an interdisciplinary post-modern critical field that identifies a nexus of m/otherness as a determining force of action and expression. While many academic interpretations including (psychology and sociology) acknowledge the relational status of human beings, Mother Studies focuses on the lived experience within a variety of circumstances with attention to the procreative, creative, and long-term experience of m/otherness and its transformative nature. This is determined by the making/dividing, connection/disconnection status of procreation, adoption, surrogacy and caregiving.

Mother Studies pays specific attention to topics as they pertain to gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, and ability. Explorations of the history of euthenics, home economics, public health, feminist studies, and masculinity studies in America, are ongoing, encouraging critical thinking and facilitating an analysis of the problematic inequalities women and mothers have historically faced. Mother Studies offers a powerful way to revise how see ourselves in the world and offers a dynamic vehicle for intellectual transformation within the parent/partner/citizen/child paradigm.

Mother Studies is housed at the Museum of Motherhood, which offers online courses. The museum draws its faculty from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and provides rigorous training. Coursework is dynamic and conveys a broad survey of the history, theory, and praxis of this emerging field. Portions of Mother Studies and JourMS (the academic journal affiliated with our programming and the Annual Academic MOM Conference).

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