[Commlist] Call for Papers: 'Maternal writing in/as creative practice'

Call for Papers: Journal of Writing in Creative Practice

Special Issue: 'Maternal writing in/as creative practice'

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-writing-in-creative-practice#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-writing-in-creative-practice#call-for-papers>

This issue aims to address what it means to write from the position of 
the maternal as part of a creative practice and how ‘maternal thinking’ 
(Ruddick, 1989) impacts on current debates within creative practice 
about care, reciprocity, labour and time. Adopting an expanded notion of 
the maternal, which reaches beyond biological understandings to include 
non-biological maternal subjectivities, we invite contributions that 
engage with the many and varied ways in which writing in/as creative 
practice can be understood as a new way to think the maternal. What does 
maternal thinking do to writing within the context of art and design 
practice and pedagogy? What is it to write not aboutthe maternal in art 
and design practice, but fromthe maternal?

The critical thinking that gives rise to this theme includes 
distinctions between motherhood as an experience and as an institution 
(Rich, 1977), motherhood and the ethics of interruption (Baraitser, 
2008), the notion of ‘thinking (m)otherwise’ (Liss, 2009), the 
difference between motherhood and the maternal (Marchevska & Walkerdine, 
2020), and recent thinking about ‘matrescence’ (Jones, 2023).

The intersection of writing and the maternal also has a rich history 
within creative practice. The issue will draw inspiration from a 
trajectory of art, design, craft and performance practices that use 
writing to figure the maternal. These include second wave feminist 
projects such as Feministo: the women’s postal art event(1975-79) and 
Mary Kelly’s scripto-visual work Post-Partum Document(1973-79), through 
to evocative and embodied visualisations such as Mona Hatoum’s video 
work Measures of Distance(1988), which layers her mother’s letters 
written in Arabic script over images of her body, and more recent 
intersections of writing and/as the maternal such as Barbara Walker’s 
paintings and drawings in the Louder Than Wordsseries (2006-9), in which 
the artist critiques the UK police ‘stop and search’ policy from her 
position as the mother of a black teenage boy. We are equally interested 
in maternal writing in/as design practices eg. design futures and 
maternal writing, or design writing and invisible women (Criado-Perez, 
2019).

Both the maternal and writing are generative practices involving care, 
desire, practice, and a fear of not getting it right. Rather than 
attempting to cover over the maternal, as if it is an obstacle to 
‘serious’ writing in/as creative practice, we want to inhabit this space 
in all its creative messiness.

Contributions might consider, but are not limited to, the following:

  *

    Temporalities of the maternal figured in/through writing on creative
    practice

  *

    Embodied writing as a maternal practice

  *

    Domestic writing practices – scribbles and scrawls

  *

    Writing as maternal care work

  *

    Disrupting maternal subjectivity through writing interventions

We encourage a diverse range of outputs including, but not limited to, 
visual essays, critical reviews, reflection pieces, scripto-visual 
works, performance scripts, interviews, conversation pieces and journal 
articles. Please send 5000-6000-word articles, or other forms of 
contribution, to (Clare.Johnson /at/ uwe.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(Clare.Johnson /at/ uwe.ac.uk)> by 1 May 2026with the subject line 
‘Maternal writing in/as creative practice + NAME’.

Further information about JWCP,including Notes for Contributors, can be 
found at 
https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-writing-in-creative-practice 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-writing-in-creative-practice>

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