A recent event at London's Freud Museum marked the launch of a collection of essays co-edited by the School's Dr Emily Jeremiah and Prof Abigail Lee Six: Motherhood in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Europe (Routledge).
Dealing with a range of topics including pregnancy and birth, affect and ambivalence, and family and legacy, this book – edited by Gill Rye, Victoria Browne, Adalgisa Giorgio, Emily Jeremiah, and Abigail Lee Six – provokes discussion and debate about that most crucial of human activities, mothering. The volume grew out of an initiative developed at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
On the evening of 26 October, co-editor Emily Jeremiah was joined by Carolyn Jess-Cooke (University of Glasgow), who founded the ‘Writing Motherhood’ project, and by Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck, University of London), a key thinker in contemporary motherhood studies. The discussion was chaired by leading journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
The discussion covered the questions of class, power, and privilege, as well the centrality of care in human relations and the tension, or perceived tension, between mothering and creativity. It also explored the potentially crucial role of literature and the arts in shaping debates about mothering.
The event was generously sponsored by Royal Holloway, University of London.
The discussion was recorded and can be heard here.
Photographs: Andrew Mitchell.
