This panel, "Of Monsters and Mothers: Challenging Representations and Theories of Maternity in Literature," seeks to explore how literature complicates, subverts, and redefines conventional understandings of motherhood. From monstrous maternal figures to radical reimaginings of care, the maternal body has long been a contested site of power, anxiety, and transformation in literary texts. We invite interdisciplinary perspectives that engage with literature across historical periods and genres, drawing from feminist, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, disability, and queer theories to interrogate the intersections of motherhood, agency, and monstrosity.

Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies.

Call for Papers: Modernist Cosmopolitanism

Submission Deadline: April 1, 2025
Conference Date: MSA 2025 Boston October 9-12
Organized by: Adriana Fischetti, CCNY, 2nd year graduate student

Modernism has long been associated with transnational exchanges, migratory identities, and an engagement with global cultures. The modernist period witnessed an unprecedented interplay between local traditions and global influences, as writers, artists, and intellectuals navigated new cultural landscapes shaped by colonialism, war, exile, and technological advancement.

ReFocus: The International Directors Series: David Cronenberg

Edinburgh University Press

Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is widely regarded as one of the finest proprietors of the body-horror genre. Cronenberg’s filmography traverses the realm of the corporeal beyond its bare form, testing the limits of what a body can do. His films explore the intricate relations between the market, science, and desire. Cronenberg also examines disease and illness, situating their grotesque ramifications in the soma and the psyche, while many other later film narratives diverge from Cronenberg’s earlier focus on body horror to exhibit a wide spectrum of directorial capabilities.

Article Collection “Human & Beyond: Exploring Our More-Than-Human World”.

Collection's Advisors: Professor Peggy Karpouzou and Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki

Publisher: Routledge Open Research

The study of life-forms’ interplays has much to contribute to the survey of alternative post-anthropocentric narratives. This is no more pressing while the disastrous phenomena afflicted on Earth’s ecosystems continues to threaten all life-forms’ existence.

Book Series: "Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures" at Rowman & Littlefield

Series Editor: Professor Peggy Karpouzou and Series co-Editor: Dr. Nikoleta Zampaki