123423 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA American / North American Lit. Studies (2021W)

In this seminar we will discuss a number of North American texts all concerned with the representation of the mother figure. We will explore not only so-called 'mom-oires', that is literary texts (both fictional and autobiographical) that revolve around the figuration and 're-membrance' of the mother. We will also include the analysis of film adaptation and the cultural and discursive analysis of blogs on/by mothers.

The aim is to guide students in a critical engagement with the phenomenon of motherhood (intended as institution, experience as well as discursive formation). In our Western, mostly secular but still Christian world, the figure of the mother has been the object of multiple investments (discursive, symbolical, mythological, religious, economic, political), idealizations (mater dolorosa, Madonna, the 'angel in the house' ), abstractions, stereotypes (the cruel stepmother, Medusa etc...) and displacements (of the sacred). Most of these religious, ideological investments have very little to do with the real life experiences of women both across time and space but also across class and race. In a time of racial, feminist and religious backlashes, we find particularly urgent to re-examine representations of mothers in a number of older and more recent texts drawn from the American context and its contested racial legacy. Particular emphasis will be put on questions of representation, aesthetics and subjectivity as well as different definitions and possibilities of motherhood across class and race.