Disability and Mothering

Publication Date: Spring 2010
Editors: Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio

We are excited to be editing an interdisciplinary book on disability and mothering. We seek papers that explore the histories, practices, theories and lived realities of mothering and disability as they run parallel to, intersect with, complicate, and inform one another. Both disability and mothering are liminal experiences, placing one at a threshold or doorway, a boundary, verge, or margin that marks a potential interval of difference offering an opening to new perspectives. Doorways and thresholds represent spaces for transition and transformation, the possibility for sharing experiences and the fluidity of identity, in the crossing back and forth from one perspective to another. As a liminal experience, “mothering” can be thought of as an attitude or orientation, a set of practices arising out of relationality, rather than a stable identity. New reproductive technologies also expand definitions of “mothering,” but also raise questions about the future of the fetus marked “disabled” as well as the lives of people living with disability in an age of genetic screening. A key goal of this volume will be to examine the productive tensions brought to view by pairing mothering and disability.

We welcome varied approaches from across the humanities and social sciences including, but not limited to:
• personal and reflective essays;
• theoretical, historical, cultural, feminist, maternal, transgender and queer studies;
• ethnographies;
• material cultural studies of such topics as—
Activism; bioethics, feminist ethics; constructions of identity, changes in identity, hybridity theories of identity; corporate workplace policies, insurance, day care, institutional care; disability/mothering in global and transnational contexts—e.g. immigration, diaspora, citizenship, national identity, homelessness; embodiment theories; feminist philosophies of care, dependency, or interdependency; film and media representations; ideological and social debates and tensions within discussions of “good” mothering/disability; issues of mothering/disability as they intersect with race, class, gender, nation; legal or scientific histories; medical critiques; navigation of space, movement, access and design of spaces; “normalcy” as a construct that impacts mothering/disability; politics and public polices; poverty; queer and/or transgender theories; reproduction/ reproductive rights; the role of web communities; the spiritual, emotional or social impact; support services, self-sponsored communities and institutions.

Abstracts/Proposals (300-500 words) due: June 1, 2008
Acceptances made by June 30, 2008
Accepted and completed papers (15 pp. double-spaced, MLA format) due: September 30, 2008
Authors with disabilities, or who have family members with disabilities, are especially encouraged to contribute. Please send inquiries and abstracts, along with a brief CV, to: Editors, Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson at lewiecc@muohio.edu and/or Jen Cellio at celliojl@muohio.edu

About the editors:

Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, the mother of an adult son, born with a disability, is a professor of English and Affiliate of the Women’s Studies Program at Miami University. Her research and teaching focus on composition and rhetoric, disability studies, and feminism. She is the author or co-editor of articles, book chapters, and several books, among them, Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008); and Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture (Southern Illinois UP, 2001). She is a founder, with five other faculty, of the Disability Studies minor at Miami.

Jen Cellio is a Ph.D. candidate at Miami University where she studies rhetorical theory, rhetorics of science, women’s rhetorics, and composition theory. Her dissertation, entitled ‘More children from the fit, less from the unfit’: Discourses of Hereditary ‘Fitness’ and Reproductive Rhetorics, post Darwin to the 21st Century, examines arguments used during the eugenics movement to curb or encourage the reproductive practices of particular groups of women.