Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an upcoming collection on mothers and food.
The purpose of this edited volume is to explore the connections between mothers, motherhood and mothering, and the production, storage, preparation, consumption and appreciation of food.
Previous scholarship has extensively explored food in relation to mental and physical health issues, such as eating disorders and obesity, within the context of families, often with an underlying tone of mother blame. The contributions to this volume will shift the focus.
Traditionally, mothers have asked: “How will I feed my child?” Now they ask: “What should we eat or avoid consuming?” When it comes to food choices, mothers stand at the intersection of strong and sometimes conflicting forces and interests, such as the food industry and public health policies.
In a Western context, daily decisions about food are usually thought of as a matter of personal choice and private matter. In reality, the ways mothers feed themselves and others are shaped by international and regional food politics, by global and local food cultures and by their own ethical values and personal tastes, as well as by the needs of the ones they feed.
The editors are Florence Pasche Guignard a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto who is researching natural parenting in the digital age, and Tanya M. Cassidy, who teaches at the University of Windsor and has published on sociological issues associated with breastfeeding.
They welcome perspectives from a variety of disciplines and encourage cross-cultural, historical and comparative work. The deadline for abstracts is Feb. 1. Visit the Demeter Press website for a list of topics.
Demeter Press is an independent feminist press committed to publishing peer-reviewed scholarly work, fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction by and about mothers, mothering and family issues. It is the publishing arm of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, founded and directed by York women’s studies Professor Andrea O’Reilly, on sabbatical this year.