I seek proposals for brief scholarly essays (3500-5000 words) that provide an overview of a chosen aspect of motherhood in the American imagination for a volume under contract with a new Bloomsbury series called Exploring the American Imagination: Ideals, Values, and Myths in Popular Culture. 

These overview essays should cite a number of popular culture texts to provide an overview of the tensions and contradictions as well as the foundational beliefs inherent in various aspects of American motherhood. Essays should cover multiple genres (film, fiction, television, graphic novels, music) and a broad time period. These are overviews or research starters rather than narrow analyses.

If there is an aspect of motherhood that you are interested in discussing, please propose it! Potential topics include: 

• Motherhood online (e.g., trends such as MomTok and Trad Wives)

• Cultural treatments of pregnancy or post-partum depression 

• Cultural imaginations of mothers and sexuality

• Motherhood in specific media (graphic novels, comics, music, animation) 

• Adoptive mothers and/or stepmothers

• “Bad” moms and unrealistic expectations for motherhood

• Motherhood in different life stages: teen moms, single mothers, aging and motherhood

• Mothering Styles: Intensive, Free Range, Tiger, Helicopter, Attachment, Crunchy

• Motherhood in the racialized imagination (Black, Latina/o/x, Asian, Indian, indigenous, etc.)

• Motherhood in the LGBTQ imagination 

• Motherhood in specific time periods/genres (for example, motherhood in southern gothic literature, motherhood in early America, motherhood in musicals, motherhood in dystopian texts, motherhood in speculative fiction, motherhood in horror, motherhood in melodrama, etc.) 

Proposals should include: 300-500 words describing your proposed approach to the overview essay, including which cultural texts you might mention and which scholarship you might reference. Be sure to articulate how your overview will situate various pop culture texts in a broader discussion of American attitudes toward your chosen aspect of motherhood. Also include a brief bio (50-100 words). 

Send inquiries and proposals to akonkle@georgiasouthern.edu by September 1, 2026. I can send an example overview essay related to a different topic to any interested parties. 

Drafts of overview essays will be due in January 2027, with revisions tentatively expected by June 2027. The completed manuscript is due January 2028. 

The essays should be accessible to students but engaging for intelligent readers seeking insights into specific works and creative artists (writers, actors, illustrators, filmmakers, artists, etc.) and their roles in shaping, supporting, and challenging ideas about who we are as a people, what we value as a nation, and ways in which both the reality and mythology of America have changed over time.