Calls for Papers from Demeter Press (Indigenous Pregnancy, Mothers, Daughters, Social Media, Sons, Ambivalence, Immigrants)

There are a bunch of CFPs from Demeter Press, so I am posting just a summary of the calls with links back to the Demeter Press site with the full details. Warning, all links are PDFs. Good luck!

Indigenous Experiences of Pregnancy and Birth [PDF]
Editors: Dr. Jaime Cidro and Dr. Hannah Tait Neufeld
Deadline for Abstracts: March 15, 2015

In North America Indigenous Peoples are diverse in the way they embrace their traditional institutions and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy and birth. Traditional midwifery, culture, customs, understandings and meanings surrounding pregnancy and birth are grounded in distinct epistemologies and worldviews that have sustained women and their families since time immemorial. Biomedical antenatal care practices in North America remain virtually unchanged from the original models developed in Europe in the early twentieth century. New technologies and diagnostic techniques have been added, yet standardized procedures are adhered to because of their association with lower mortality rates. Rates of maternal mortality are significantly lower in Canada than less affluent countries, however, inequalities exist. Indigenous women experience disproportionately high rates of high-risk pregnancies, associated with elevated rates of maternal mortality. First Nation and Inuit women are more likely to experience complicated labours and preterm births, with infant mortality rates almost 2 to 4 times higher than the general population. It is widely recognized that these circumstances are exacerbated by inadequate access to health and social services as a direct result of colonization, including structural barriers, restrictive and oppressive policies, and complex social determinants of health. Years of colonization have impacted the degree to which women have choice in the place and ways they deliver their babies, and who is included in their birthing experience. Culturally appropriate models of prenatal and birthing care are important components in Indigenous health sovereignty and self-determination.

Mothers and Daughters [PDF]
Editors: Dannabang Kuwabong,
Janet MacLennan, and Dorsía Smith Silva
Deadline for Abstracts: April 30, 2015

This anthology will explore the multifaceted connections between mothers and daughters. We welcome submissions that analyze new fields of inquiry in this area, examining discourses about mothers and daughters through academic writing, narrative essays, and creative work. We specifically encourage offerings that address the identity and experiences of mothers and daughters from within an interdisciplinary framework, which includes cultural, biological, socio-political, relational and historical perspectives. Therefore the uniqueness of this collection revolves around a fluidity in blending not just work from across academic disciplines, but also the forms in which this work is presented: academic inquiry and critique as well as creative and narrative explorations.

Taking the Village Online: Mothers, Motherhood, and Social Media [PDF]
Editors: Lorin Basden Arnold and Betty Ann Martin
Deadline for Abstracts: June 1, 2015

The rise of social media has changed how we understand and enact relationships across our lives, including motherhood. The meanings and practices of mothering have been significantly impacted by the availability of online mother groups (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) as well as internet resources intended to 'enhance' and inform maternal experience and self-concept (ex. pinterest, YouTube). The village that now contributes to the mothering experience has grown exponentially, granting mothers access to interactional partners and knowledges never before available. This volume of works will explore the impact of social media forms on our cultural understandings of motherhood and the ways that we communicate about the experience and practice of mothering.

Mothers and Sons [PDF]
Editors: Besi Brillian Muhonja and
Wanda Thomas Bernard
Deadline for Abstracts: April 30, 2015

Conceptual and empirical research and scholarship as well as creative works tend to primarily contemplate parental interactions and influence in same sex generational dyads: mother-daughter or father-son. This consideration of parenting assumes gendered parental legacy. This anthology, which engages the cross-sex parent child paring, invites submissions in the form of academic writing, narrative essays, book reviews and creative work from across the disciplines that explore the idea of 'mothers and sons' across cultures, polities, and temporal spaces as a cultural, biological, socio-political, psychological, relational and historical identity, relationship, experience, philosophy, and practice.

Maternal Ambivalence [PDF]
Editors: Dr. Tanya Cassidy, Dr. Susan Hogan & Dr. Sarah LaChance Adams
Deadline for Abstracts: September 1, 2015

This anthology will examine the diverse and complex experiences of maternal ambivalence from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Most simply, maternal ambivalence can be described as the simultaneous and contradictory emotional responses of mothers toward their children: love and hate, anger and tenderness, pity and cruelty, satisfaction and rage. Mothers often feel as though their own desires are directed against themselves when they are in opposition to their children's needs and wishes. When one's beloved child cries in despair at one's departure, one may both want and not want to leave. When the mother simultaneously desires intimacy and distance in relation to her child, when she feels the impulses to both harm and protect, to both abandon and nurture, this is when maternal ambivalence is at its perplexing height.

Immigrant/Refugee Mothers [PDF]
Editors: Helen Vallianatos and
Anna Kuroczycka Schultes
Deadline for Abstracts: March 15, 2015

The experiences of mothers who are immigrants or refugees vary across time and space. Immigrant scholars have long discussed potential factors that impact the immigrant experience, such as contexts of reception, racialization, economic marginalization, language use, and cultural identity, among others (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008). In this edited volume, we wish to explore how and why immigrant/refugees mothers' experiences differ due to the challenges posed by the migration process, but also what commonalities underline immigrant/refugee mothers' lived experiences. How are the lives of immigrant mothers dependent on cultural, environmental and socio-economic circumstances? Papers may look at how mothers' perceptions of gender roles be influenced by migration and the host culture, what everyday mothering means to immigrant/refugee women, their families, and communities, and what challenges immigrant/refugee mothers face. We would also like papers that investigate how refugee mothers' issues may differ from immigrant mothers. The collection will focus on ethnographic (research based), theoretical and creative submissions.