This cross-disciplinary collection considers the intersection of affect and mothering, with the aim of expanding both the experiential and theoretical frameworks that guide our understanding of mothering and of theories of affect. It brings together creative, reflective, poetic, and theoretical pieces to question, challenge, and re-conceptualize mothering through the lens of affect, and affect through the lens of mothering. The collection also aims to explore less examined mothering experiences such as failure, disgust, and ambivalence in order to challenge normative paradigms and narratives surrounding mothers and mothering. The authors in this collection demonstrate the theoretical and practical possibilities opened up by a simultaneous consideration of affect and mothering, thereby broadening our understanding of the complexities and nuances of the always changing experiences of world-making.

Dr. Julia Lane is a clown scholar and a mother. Her research principally engages with ways of bringing clowning practice into academic spaces and conversations. This is her first publication with Demeter Press and her first stint as editor for a scholarly anthology.

Julia Lane's profile page

Eleonora Joensuu is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Education at Simon Fraser University. She researches disgust and its role in selfhood and ethics. She is especially interested in how fascination and repulsion can coincide in disgust experiences. Eleonora lives, works, and plays on unceded Coast Salish territory in British Columbia, Canada.

Eleonora Joensuu's profile page