SOCSC200 Politics of Motherhood

This interdisciplinary course will analyze the multiple, and at times contradictory, meanings assigned to motherhood, mothering, and mothers in our contemporary global society, and the implications of theses meanings for the existence and everyday reality of women who bear and/or raise children. We will draw on social science research and theory, as well as philosophical and humanist traditions, in order to locate the lived experiences of women who are mothers within the cultural, political, economic, and legal dimensions framing motherhood. Looking at a variery of cultural contexts and understanding that gender is but one (though a central) element of identity, the course will examine five inter-related subjects: * The modern development/invention of motherhood; * The representation of mothers and motherhood; * The theorizing of motherhood by influential intellectuals, particularly in the psychoanalytical stream (Freud, Winnicot, Lacan); * The range of feminist discourse on 'mothering' and its impact; * The ways mothers themselves have portrayed their experience in a variety of modes and genres.