CFP: Motherhood, Servitude and Care

MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics)
Call for Participation
Motherhood, Servitude and the Delegation of Care
 Conference
and
`Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour`
Digital Media Competition

at Birkbeck, University of London
 September 23rd and 24th 2010
MaMSIE is an international network of scholars, artists and activists working in the emerging interdisciplinary field of maternal studies. Our 6th conference focuses on the interrelations between labour, capital, care and the maternal. In particular, it will consider the diverse ways ‘maternal care’ has been, and continues to be delegated and shared, and the implications for our understandings of maternal subjectivities and the labour of care. The conference will open up ‘maternity’ as a term that includes the paid and unpaid work of a diverse range of social actors: carers, domestic workers, au-pairs, nannies, child-minders, nurses, care-workers, extended family members and members of friendship networks, in addition to complex organisations such as charities and NGOs. The aim of this event is to generate a dialogue between two rich and substantial bodies of feminist scholarship; work on the history of domestic labour, service and servitude and current debates about globalism, migration and the care industries, recasting existing scholarship through the lens of maternal studies.

Key Questions

How do we understand the (maternal) subjectivities of a range of care workers and what might a consideration of such subjectivities contribute to our understandings of the maternal?
What are the political, economic, affective and subjective effects of sharing maternal labour?
How do histories of class, servitude, service, gender, ‘race’, and ‘care’ interact with contemporary neoliberal patterns of migration?
· What are the potentials for new relations that might emerge from specific constellations of maternal subjectivity and modes of care work?

We welcome submissions for participation from academics, artists, clinicians, activists and other practitioners working on issues related to the maternal, care, servitude, domestic labour, migration, etc. Please submit a 250-word abstract as an email attachment to mamsie@bbk.ac.uk by 30th June 2010.


The conference will feature keynote talks and a range of smaller workshop sessions. A small number of papers will be selected for live presentation; a larger number of papers will be included on the conference website; everyone will be welcome to participate from the floor and in the small workshop discussions.
Conference Fees: £60/£30 (unfunded)


`Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour`
Digital Media Competition

As part of the Motherhood, Servitude and the Delegation of Care Conference, MaMSIE are delighted to launch a Digital Media Competition.
Digital media entries should respond to the title `Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour`. This might take the form of a digital photographic work or a more abstract piece, such as a work of multimedia digital fiction or creative nonfiction, an experimental digital film, or website. Any form of digital output will be considered.
Everyone is welcome to enter, professional or amateur. Finalists will be chosen by a distinguished panel of artists, writers and journalists.
Prize: There will be a cash prize of £150 for the winning entry and two small runners up prizes. The winner and runners up will also receive free entry to the conference and their work will be featured on the conference website, and the online journal, Studies in the Maternal. Maximum 2 works per entrant, either as a digital file or URL.
To enter, please:
·Mark entries with your name, contact details and the title of the work
·Include a 250-word description of your piece
·Include a 100-word biography of yourself
·Include the work itself as digital file or URL
·Write ‘Maternal Subjectivities: Care and Labour
Digital Media Competition and Exhibition’ in the e-mail header
·Send entries to Kate Pullinger at kpullinger@dmu.ac.uk.

Deadline for entries: August 1st 2010.
Successful entrants will be informed by 15 September, 2010
For more information please visit: www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk