Call for Chapters

Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an edited collection entitled:

Mothers, Mothering, and Climate Change

Editors: Carolina Toscano and Sarah Marie Wiebe

Please submit proposals by March 15th, 2024

            In her recently published book, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, Lucy Jones asks the following question: “What does it mean to be pregnant at the most ecologically destructive time in human history?” (30). Similarly, in The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents a trip to Antarctica to study climate change at the same time as she considers becoming a mother: “It is disorienting to simultaneously hold these two possibilities aloft in my mind- one grounded in disintegration, the other in creation” (42). In considering climate change and mothering, how do we hold space for these two seemingly conflicting stories, one that attempts to document and stall an inevitable end while the other focuses on new beginnings? Can mothering encompass both conditions, be pulled in opposite directions, and exist within this tension? Are we not, yet again, asking mothers to do it all?

This collection aims to answer these questions and explore them in an interdisciplinary anthology that brings together voices of concerned matricentric feminist theorists, researchers, and activists from a wide range of disciplines and fields. These may include law, psychology, sociology, anthropology, women’s and gender studies, cultural studies, literary studies, legal studies, and all social sciences and humanities. Creative contributions are also welcomed along with academic writing. Submissions might include personal essay/reflection, academic essay, memoir, creative non-fiction, diary style, poetry, art, photography, and hybrid genres.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Mothering in the Anthropocene
• Climate change and maternal health
• Experiences of layered crises (mental health, wildfire smoke, pandemic, etc.)
• Living through a “code red” climate emergency
• Grappling with life as a “hot mess,” the frenzy of parenting and climate change
• Intersections of maternal and environmental activism
• Mothering and climate change in fiction
• Mothering, migration, and climate refugees
• Matricentric feminism, ecofeminism, and what to teach our children
• Mothering and the climate emergency
• Motherhood and experiences of extreme weather events
• Parenting through climate change

Submission Procedure

Please submit a chapter proposal which includes the following: title, abstract, and a short biography of the author(s). Proposals should be a maximum of 500 words written in English, using Microsoft Word format, Times New Roman, 12 font. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified and sent submission guidelines. Chapter contributions will be 6,500 words, excluding figures, tables, and references.

1. Proposal submission deadline: March 15th, 2024

2. Notification of acceptance: April 15th, 2024

3. Full 1st draft of chapter due: October 15th, 2024

4. Editorial review results returned: December 15th, 2024

5. Final chapter submission: February 15th, 2025

7. Projected publication date – May 15th 2025

Inquiries and submissions: Carolina Toscano ctoscano1@slu.edu and Sarah Marie Wiebe swiebe@uvic.ca