2026 JourMS CFP – The submission portal for the Journal of Mother Studies 2026 is open.
The title of this year’s journal is “Reproductive Identities and Resistance: Mothers and Others in Culture, Community and Collaboration.” This broad backdrop offers a platform for submissions on a wide variety of topics.
SUBMIT HERE THRU MAY 31st, 2026
This year we aim to play with some printed zine versions of the journal as well so some shorter submissions will be considered including comics, drawings, art and creative writing that aligns with the core topics.
This year’s theme is grounded in Aurélie M. Athan’s concept of reproductive identity as a lifelong meaning-making process regarding how individuals orient themselves to reproduction, parenting, and caregiving, and the “if/when/how/who” associated with reproductive decision-making.
As a concept, reproductive identity is fluid and resists pronatalist and patriarchal mandates that dictate narrow expectations about reproductive outcomes and parenting. It centers an individual’s lived experiences and associated meanings about all aspects of reproduction, including being childfree, pregnancy, infertility, abortion, pregnancy loss and grief, adoption, and extended family systems of caregiving. The various and ever-changing meanings associated with reproduction (or reproductive potential) across the lifespan is paramount to understanding reproductive identity as a concept with emotional, spiritual, financial, familial, cultural, and political influences and implications. As a conference theme, we welcome work that shares interdisciplinary, feminist, holistic, developmental, and narrative inquiry with reproductive identity as a concept.
We invite critical reflection and collective inquiry into how maternal, reproductive, and care-centered identities are formed, challenged, and transformed across contexts, relationships, and life stages. We seek work that explores these identities not only as individual journeys, but as deeply social, political, and communal acts.
Subthemes include (but are not limited to):
- Reproductive and Birth Justice Movements
- Black Maternal Health
- Intersectional M/Other Identities & (Dis)Abilities
- M/Othering Across the Lifespan: From Matrescence to Elderhood
- Artmaking and Creativity as Resistance
- The Messiness of M/Otherhood & M/Other Studies
- Care-giving and Care Labor in Families, Health Systems, and Beyond
- Authentic and Community-Based Forms of Healing
- Empowering M/others of All Kinds
- “Who Am I?”: Identity, Transformation, and the Self-in-Community
JOURNAL OF MOTHER STUDIES (JourMS): This call is open to the public to scholars and artists from around the world. In addition, we hope submissions from the March 2026 conference consider submitting to the Journal of Mother Studies, an academic, peer-reviewed, hybrid digital humanities journal devoted to Mother Studies published annually. Works may also be submitted for the Journal only.
If you have questions, please write JourMS@gmail.com or leave a message: 877-711-MOMS (6667). We will return your call.
- JourMS - 