Mothering in Cultural Context

Catalog description

HDEV 301, Mothering in Cultural Context: Why are most Disney princesses (even most Disney heroines for that matter) motherless? Why do we say “mother tongue” and “motherland” and not “father tongue” and “fatherland”? Why do we see more interviews on television with the mothers of soldiers in the War on Terror than we do with fathers of these soldiers? Why are “bad mothers” more often in the limelight than “bad fathers”? The interdisciplinary course will analyze the multiple, and at times contradictory, meanings assigned to motherhood, mothering, and mothers in the contemporary global society, and the implications of these 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 variety of cultural, racial, and national contexts, and understanding that gender is but one (though a central) element of the social construction of reality and identity, the course will primarily examine the following five inter-related themes and subjects: the invention and development of motherhood as a modern “scientific” institution and a vocation with classed, raced, and colonial dimensions; the representation of mothers and motherhood; the theorizing of motherhood by influential intellectuals, particularly in the psychoanalytical stream; the range of feminist approaches to “mothering” (which is often differentiated from “motherhood” with its patriarchal ideological underpinnings), and its impact; and the ways mothers themselves have portrayed their experiences and viewpoints in a variety of modes and genres. Offered fall and spring.