Special issue of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies

We are issuing a brief second call for papers for the special issue Motherhoods around the World in the peer-reviewed, Scopus indexed journal, the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies.

Due to the withdrawal of one or two previously accepted contributions, additional article slots have become available.

We invite new submissions that explore the representations of mothers and motherhood in contemporary literature (broadly defined), visual art, digital media, video games, social media, AI as well as in film and on television, both in Anglophone and non-Anglophone contexts.

We invite interdisciplinary submissions anchored in literary and cultural studies addressing questions related (but not limited) to: 

• Post-millennial representations of motherhood and maternal subjectivities 
• Post-COVID perspectives on motherhood   
• Motherhood as/in nationhood  
• Embodiment and motherhood  
• Challenging the representational scheme of monstrous motherhood
• Defying idealized portrayals and the concept of normative motherhood 
• The role of factors like race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, ability, culture, language, religion, and nationality in shaping maternal subjectivity 
• Generational experiences in motherhood 

About the journal The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (University of Debrecen, Hungary) is published by Sciendo. It is an open-access, peer-reviewed, Scopus-indexed journal. No contributor’s fee will be charged.  

 About the editors 

Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the North American Department of the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen. The title of her dissertation as well as the topic of her upcoming monograph is Mothers in the Wake of Slavery: The Im/possibility of Motherhood in Post-1980 African American Women’s Prose. Her research on North American representations of embodiment, motherhood, and womanhood has been published in journals such as Short Fiction in Theory and Practice (2022), Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (2023), and Canadian Literature (2023). She has contributed chapters to edited collections such as Critical Insights: The Color Purple (Salem Press, 2022), Jesmyn Ward: New Critical Essays (Edinburgh UP, 2023), Normative Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2023), and Identity, Violence and Resilience in 21st-Century Black British and American Women’s Fiction (Peter Lang, 2024). 

Zsófia Orosz-Réti, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the Department of British Studies of the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen. Her dissertation focused on the popular culture and its cultural memory of the 1980s in Hungary. Her research has been published in academic journals such as The Journal of Gaming and Virtual Words, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Studies in European Cinema, Acta Ludologica, The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, and she has edited special thematic blocks and issues on various aspects of game studies in The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (2023), Acta Philologica (2024) and Acta Ludologica (2025). Currently, her primary scholarly interest includes cultural memory and popular culture in general, and the problem of subject positions with limited agency in video games – including unheroic ludic narratives of civilians in war, or of faceless Everymen in dystopias. More recently, she works on maternal identities in games and new media.   

 Submission guidelines Submit a structured abstract of no more than 300 words outlining the main arguments and theoretical background of the paper, and a brief bio (up to 150 words) containing your name, institutional affiliation, and email address by May 15, 2026.

Submissions should be sent to Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka (lenartmuszkazs@arts.unideb.hu) and Zsófia Orosz-Réti (reti.zsofia@arts.unideb.hu). Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 25 May, 2026. Completed papers (5000-7000 words, conforming to MLA in terms of format and citation style) are due by 1 September, 2026. All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Please note that acceptance will depend on the strength and fit of the final piece. Publication of the issue is expected in 2027.