>
>Subject: CFP: Mothers and Motherhood as National Allegory (6/15/06; 
>collection)
>
>From: "Lisa E. Bernstein" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>CFP:  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
>([log in to unmask]) and Pamela Monaco ([log in to unmask]).

*******************
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