2025 Conference
Annual Academic & Arts MoM Conference
For the past 20 years, since 2005, the Museum of Motherhood (MoM) has been bringing together scholars, mother-artists, change makers, and community members for the Annual Academic & Arts MoM Conference.
We have welcomed participants from around the world to join us in person and on Zoom as they share research, expertise, creative projects, and a passion for the issues, obstacles and health-related topics affecting women, m/others and families. This year is no different!
JOIN US for this year’s theme of ‘Fun, Sex & Crying Out Loud’ at The University of South Florida in St. Petersburg and online, on March 14, 15, & 16, 2025 followed by our MoM Art Auction. In partnership with OXH Gallery @he_a_rt_project March 18 in Tampa.
Academics, Artists & Activists
We’re thrilled to announce Dyana Gravina as the Special Guest Artist presenter and Keynote at our 20th Anniversary MoM Conference. Dyana Gravina (They/She) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, birth Doula and activist, mover, and community builder. She is the founding director of Procreate Project and the Mother House Studios, a pioneering arts organisation and artists studios dedicated to (m)others and primary care givers.
Dyana has developed for over a decade curatorial and activist practices that pushes the boundaries of what we showcase, where we showcase it and how people experience it. We are thrilled to welcome her to USF as part of our March ‘FUN, SEX and CRYING OUT LOUD‘ Conference March 14-16 with Art Auction
The Museum of Motherhood is proud to present art, activism and research on the subject of ‘Fun, Sex, & Crying Out Loud’. This year’s theme invites articles and art that support both the interrogation and levity necessary to navigate turbulent times. As well, it supports the subject matter elucidated in the Museum’s 2024-25 new ‘Escape Womb Experience’ and the theme of conception, gestation, and birth. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to experience this one-of-a-kind exhibit.
This international conference invites artists, scholars, poets, sociologists, maternal psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, women’s, sexuality, and gender studies professors, masculinity studies experts, birth-workers, doctors, researchers, students, and lay-people to share their work and tie it to this year’s theme. Works that are inclusive of all identities of birthing folx are encouraged.
We encourage presenters to unpack the sociocultural domain of conception, gestation, and birth and the nuanced and real experiences of all aspects of the psychological, personal, professional, and media environment within which these experiences are situated.
The conference will serve as a site of resistance and empowerment as we deconstruct, reframe, and affirm the complex landscape of conception (intended and unintended), gestation (in body and in other’s bodies), and birth within the ongoing labor of diverse family systems everywhere. We recognize the scale, variance, and duration of these passionate personal and institutionalized experiences and hope that this conference will contribute to the body of knowledge on this subject.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Reproductive language, ethics, and care
- Queer love, M/other love
- Normative constructions of gender in m/otherwork, pregnancy, and birthing
- Biomedical and cultural discourses of conception, gestation, and birth
- Marginalized identities, fertility treatment, gender identity, and intersex identities
- Un/wanted pregnancy in the context of pronatalism and policy/criminalization
- Pregnancy and birthing with (dis-)abilities, illness, and children with special needs
- Divorce, breaking up, un-coupling, and families with complex identities and circumstances
- Bucking the trends and breaking new ground
- Art as healing, activism, and expression, and the importance of play
- Embodied resistance to socially constructed conventions about motherwork, pregnancy, and birth, including as they are contextualized within marginalized positions
- Language and identity
- Pain, spiritual awakening, birthing ourselves
CONFERENCE: The Annual Academic MoM Conference is in person and online in 2025. We welcome individuals and roundtables conducting research, making art, working in therapeutic, medical, university, and birth settings, as well as auto-ethnographic perspectives by m/others, family members, & students. Submissions must include a title, bio, & abstract. Conference applications are due December 15, 2024. These include all submission types (e.g. performance, media, music).
TO SUBMIT: go to https://jourms.org/submit/. Questions can be emailed directly to JourMS@gmail.com. Or call 877-711-MOMS (6667) leave a message. All submissions may also be considered for publication in the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS.org) at presenter’s discretion. MOMmuseum.org St. Pete, FL USA.
JOURNAL OF MOTHER STUDIES (JourMS): All submissions for the conference should also consider submitting to the Journal of Mother Studies, an academic, peer-reviewed, hybrid digital humanities journal devoted to Mother Studies published annually. Final submissions for the Journal are due by May 30th (midnight). JourMS
*In gratitude to USF for their abundant support – ALL USF STUDENTS & STAFF MAY REGISTER FOR FREE ATTENDANCE TO THE CONFERENCE. Please follow the link below and sign up using the form at the bottom of the ‘registration’ page.
Campus Map Here
Annual Academic & Arts MoM Conference Schedule 2024 –SCHEDULE / PRESS RELEASE
The 10th Annual Academic M.O.M. Conference was held a CUNY, The Graduate Center in 2015, sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Dept. Find out more by going to the Museum of Motherhood and clicking here.
- JourMS - 