CFP: Pandemic Rhetorics of Motherhood

The next Northeast Modern Language Association Convention is scheduled to be held in Baltimore, MD, from March 10-13, 2022. The “Pandemic Rhetorics of Parenthood” panel is seeking submissions consistent with the conference theme of Care.

This panel seeks submissions using rhetorical and/or feminist theory to examine pandemic representations of motherhood and mothering, understood as encompassing parenting and caregiving broadly. Proposals exploring personal, political, economic, aesthetic, pedagogical, and other discourses of pandemic motherhood are welcome. Possible topics include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

• the mother as teacher
• the mother as worker
• mothers in popular culture
• rhetorics of maternal health and wellness
• rhetorics of maternal anxiety and contagion
• rhetorics of maternal grief and loss
• post-pandemic motherhood

Participants are encouraged to consider pandemic rhetorics of motherhood as exigencies for meaningful social change.

Abstracts are due September 30, 2021. Abstract length is flexible (250-500 words is a good guide). NEMLA’s submission guidelines are available at http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers.html

You can access the panel’s submission portal here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19588

More information about the conference is at http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html.