Mothering Mennonite

Mothering Mennonite
Author: Buller Rachel Epp
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2013-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1927335868

Mothering Mennonite marks the first scholarly attempt to incorporate religious groundings in interpretations of motherhood. The essays included here broaden our understanding of maternal identity as something not only constructed within the family and by society at large, but also influenced significantly by historical traditions and contemporary belief systems of religious communities. A multidisciplinary compilation of essays, this volume joins narrative and scholarly voices to address both the roles of mothering in Mennonite contexts and the ways in which Mennonite mothering intersects with and is shaped by the world at large. Contributors address cultural constructions of motherhood within ethnoreligious Mennonite communities, examining mother-daughter relationships and intergenerational influences, analyzing visual and literary representations of Mennonite mothers, challenging cultural constructions and expectations of motherhood, and tracing the effects of specific religious and cultural contexts on mothering in North and South America.’

Mothering Mennonite

Mothering Mennonite
Author: Rachel Epp Buller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2013
Genre: Mennonite women
ISBN: 9781927335123

Mothering Mennonite marks the first scholarly attempt to incorporate religious groundings in interpretations of motherhood. The essays included here broaden our understanding of maternal identity as something not only constructed within the family and by society at large, but also influenced significantly by historical traditions and contemporary belief systems of religious communities. A multidisciplinary compilation of essays, this volume joins narrative and scholarly voices to address both the roles of mothering in Mennonite contexts and the ways in which Mennonite mothering intersects with and is shaped by the world at large. Contributors address cultural constructions of motherhood within ethnoreligious Mennonite communities, examining mother-daughter relationships and intergenerational influences, analyzing visual and literary representations of Mennonite mothers, challenging cultural constructions and expectations of motherhood, and tracing the effects of specific religious and cultural contexts on mothering in North and South America.'

Moving Meals and Migrating Mothers

Moving Meals and Migrating Mothers
Author: Abdullahi Osman El-Tom
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2021-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1772583405

Moving Meals and Migrating Mothers: Culinary cultures, diasporic dishes and familial foodways explores the complex interplay between the important global issues of food, families, and migration. We have an introduction and twelve additional chapters which we have organised into three parts: Part I Moving Meals, Markets and Migrant Mothers; Part II Migrating Mothers Performing Identity through Moving Meals; Part III Meanings and Experiences of Migrant Maternal Meals. Although these parts are not mutually exclusive, they are meant to emphasize socio-cultural and economic considerations of migration (Part I), the food itself (Part II), and families (Part III). We have a wide geographic representation, including Europe (Ireland and France), the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Korea. In addition, we have contributors from all stages of career, including full professors, as well recent doctoral graduates. Overall the contributions are interdisciplinary, and therefore use a variety of methodologies, although most make use of traditional social sciences methods, including interviews and ethnographic observations.

On Mothering Multiples: Complexities and Possibilities

On Mothering Multiples: Complexities and Possibilities
Author: Kathy Mantas
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 177258049X

Demeter Press took on the challenge of discussing multiples through On Mothering Multiples: Complexities and Possibilities, a book that promised to “(re)explore, (re)present, and make meaning of the process of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering experiences with multiples”. Under the editorship of Kathy Mantas, and through diverse contributions of research, artwork and narrative pieces, this topic is explored with diverse voices that elicit nuance towards a subject that often suffers from cliché and overt charm. Daring to taunt the reader who may be beguiled by the blessing of multiples with an unflinching look at subjects such as fetal demise, disability, post-partum depression, the beauty and the beast of the post-twin maternal body, and the society’s obsession and derision with multiples conceived through assistive reproductive technology, this book is a foundational text on the topic of the messiness of multiple births and mothering. This collection manages to be both intensely personal while maintaining the scholarly distance necessary to offer an important contribution to the field of motherhood studies as well as intersecting with grief work and disability studies. Published in 2016, this book remains provocative, and stealth in how it unfurls its wisdom, providing both clarity and further

The Routledge Companion to Motherhood

The Routledge Companion to Motherhood
Author: Lynn O'Brien Hallstein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 671
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351684191

Interdisciplinary and intersectional in emphasis, the Routledge Companion to Motherhood brings together essays on current intellectual themes, issues, and debates, while also creating a foundation for future scholarship and study as the field of Motherhood Studies continues to develop globally. This Routledge Companion is the first extensive collection on the wide-ranging topics, themes, issues, and debates that ground the intellectual work being done on motherhood. Global in scope and including a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, literature, communication studies, sociology, women’s and gender studies, history, and economics, this volume introduces the foundational topics and ideas in motherhood, delineates the diversity and complexity of mothering, and also stimulates dialogue among scholars and students approaching from divergent backgrounds and intellectual perspectives. This will become a foundational text for academics in Women's and Gender Studies and interdisciplinary researchers interested in this important, complex and rapidly growing topic. Scholars of psychology, sociology or public policy, and activists in both university and workplace settings interested in motherhood and mothering will find it an invaluable guide.

Ethics for Apocalyptic Times

Ethics for Apocalyptic Times
Author: Daniel Shank Cruz
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2023-10-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0271096063

Ethics for Apocalyptic Times is about the role literature can play in helping readers cope with our present-day crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and the shift toward fascism in global politics. Using the lens of Mennonite literature and their own personal experience as a culturally Mennonite, queer, Latinx person, Daniel Shank Cruz investigates the age-old question of what literature’s role in society should be, and argues that when we read literature theapoetically, we can glean a relational ethic that teaches us how to act in our difficult times. In this book, Cruz theorizes theapoetics—a feminist reading strategy that reveals the Divine via literature based on lived experiences—and extends the concept to show how it is queer, decolonial, and equally applicable to secular and religious discourse. Cruz’s analysis focuses on Mennonite literature—including Sofia Samatar’s short story collection Tender and Miriam Toew’s novel Women Talking—but also examines a non-Mennonite text, Samuel R. Delany’s novel The Mad Man, alongside practices of haiku and tarot, to show how reading theapoetically is transferable to other literary traditions. Weaving together close reading and personal narrative, this pathbreaking book makes a significant and original contribution to the field of Mennonite literary studies. Cruz’s arguments will also be appreciated by literary scholars interested in queer theory and the role of literature in society.

The Mother Wave

The Mother Wave
Author: Andrea O'Reilly
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2024-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1772585181

Matricentric feminism seeks to make motherhood the business of feminism by positioning mothers' needs and concerns as the starting point for a theory and politic on and for the empowerment of women as mothers. Based on the conviction that mothering is a verb, it understands that becoming and being a mother is not limited to biological mothers or cisgender women but rather to anyone who does the work of mothering as a central part of their life. The Mother Wave, the first-ever book on the topic, compellingly explores how mothers need a matricentric mode of feminism organized from and for their particular identity and work as mothers, and because mothers remain disempowered despite sixty years of feminism. The anthology makes visible the power of matricentric feminism as it is theorized, enacted, and represented to realize and achieve the subversive potential of mothers and their contributions to feminist theory and activism. Contributors share the impact and influence of matricentric feminism on families and children, culture, art/literature, education, public policy, social media, and workplace practices through personal reflections, scholarly essays, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, and photography. The mother wave of matricentric feminism invites conversations with others and offers a praxis of feminism that aims to coexist, overlap, and intersect with others.

Mothers and Food: Negotiating Foodways from Maternal Perspectives

Mothers and Food: Negotiating Foodways from Maternal Perspectives
Author: Pasche Florence Guignard
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1772580619

From multidisciplinary perspectives, this volume explores the roles mothers play in the producing, purchasing, preparing and serving of food to their own families and to their communities in a variety of contexts. By examining cultural representations of the relationships between feeding and parenting in diverse media and situations, these contributions highlight the tensions in which mothers get entangled. They show mothers’ agency — or lack thereof — in negotiating the environmental, material, and economic reality of their feeding care work while upholding other ideals of taste, nutrition, health and fitness shaped by cultural norms. The contributors to Mothers and Food go beyond the normative discourses of health and nutrition experts and beyond the idealistic images that are part of marketing strategies. They explore what really drives mothers to maintain or change their family’s foodways, for better or for worse, paying a particular attention to how this shapes their maternal identity. Questioning the motto according to which “people are what they eat,” the chapters in this volume show that mothers cannot be categorized simply by how they feed themselves and their family.

Natal Signs: Cultural Representations of Preguancy, Birth and Parenting

Natal Signs: Cultural Representations of Preguancy, Birth and Parenting
Author: Nadya Burton
Publisher: Demeter Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1772580368

Natal Signs: Cultural Representations of Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting explores some of the ways in which reproductive experiences are taken up in the rich arena of cultural production. The chapters in this collection pose questions, unsettle assumptions, and generate broad imaginative spaces for thinking about representation of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. They demonstrate the ways in which practices of consuming and using representations carry within them the productive forces of creation. Bringing together an eclectic and vibrant range of perspectives, this collection offers readers the possibility to rethink and reimagine the diverse meanings and practices of representations of these significant life events. Engaging theoretical reflection and creative image making, the contributors explore a broad range of cultural signs with a focus on challenging authoritative representations in a manner that seeks to reveal rather than conceal the insistently problematic and contestable nature of image culture. Natal Signs gathers an exciting set of critically engaged voices to reflect on some of life’s most meaningful moments in ways that affirm natality as the renewed promise of possibility.

Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology

Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology
Author: Claire Bischoff
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2017-12-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3319596535

This volume investigates how mothers can understand parenting as spiritual practice, and what this practice means for theological scholarship. An intergenerational and intercultural group of mother-scholars explores these questions that arise at the intersection of motherhood studies, religious practice, pastoral care, and theology through engaging and accessible essays. Essays include both narrative and theological elements, as authors draw on personal reflection, interviews, and/or sociological studies to write about the theological implications of parenting practice, rethink key concepts in theology, and contribute to a more robust account of parenting as spiritual practice from various theological perspectives. The volume both challenges oppressive, religious images of self-sacrificing motherhood and considers the spiritual dimensions of mothering that contribute to women’s empowerment and well-being. It also deepens practical and systematic theologies to include concern for the embodied and everyday challenges and joys of motherhood as it is experienced and practiced in diverse contexts of privilege and marginalization.