Helena Wahlström Henriksson – författare

This open access volume offers original essays on how motherhood and mothering are represented in contemporary fiction and life writing across several national contexts.

This open access volume offers original essays on how motherhood and mothering are represented in contemporary fiction and life writing across several national contexts. Providing a broad range of perspectives in terms of geopolitical places, thematic concerns, and theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches, it demonstrates the significance of literary narratives for understanding and critiquing motherhood and mothering as social phenomena and subjective experiences. The chapters contextualize motherhood and mothering in terms of their particular national and cultural location and analyze narratives about mothers who are firmly placed in one national context, as well as those who are in “in-between” positions due to migrant experiences. The contributions foreground and link together the themes central to the volume: embodied experience and maternal embodiment; notions of what is “normal” or natural (or not) about motherhood; maternal health and illness; mother-daughter relations;maternality and memory; and the (im)possibilities of giving voice to the mother. They raise questions about how motherhood and mothering are marked by absence and/or presence, as well as by profound ambivalences.

Chapters are produced out of and/or are set within Canada, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Finland, India, Iran, China, Japan, South Korea, Jamaica, South Africa, and Australia.

This volume explores which relations produce or maintain masculinitiesand certain gendered systems of power and the consequences of these genderconstructions that further gender research. To understand the meanings ofmasculinity/masculinities and relationalities as critical concepts in genderstudies it takes a wide theoretical grip that spans over several researchfields. From a feminist perspective, it critically investigates masculinitiesas relationally constructed by scrutinizing which relations constructmasculinity within a certain gendered system of power, such as the nation, thefamily, or the workplace, and explores how this is done. ‘In relation to what?’is hence, in spite of its almost vulgar rhetorical simplicity, an importantquestion in investigating and problematizing gender.

This volume explores which relations produce or maintain masculinitiesand certain gendered systems of power and the consequences of these genderconstructions that further gender research.

Mamma, moderskap - orden bågnar idag av nya innebörder när tekniken och samhället förändras. Överallt hittar vi historier om moderskap i romaner, essäer, dikter, patientupplevelser, bloggar och digitala diskussionstrådar. Både i litteraturen och verkligheten handlar det om ensamhet och social isolering, men också om styrka och gemenskap.Mamma hursomhelst är en samling berättelser som reflekterar över erfarenheter från en mängd olika håll. Här blandas bidrag från forskare, kulturskribenter och skönlitterära författare. Boken innehåller berättelser om förlossningsdepression, om att vara pappa och gravid, om BB-vård, mor-dotterrelationer, tankar kring att vara adoptivmor, om att inte vilja eller inte kunna få barn, om att vara mamma i ett nytt land med ett nytt språk och mycket annat. En del texter handlar om djupt traumatiska upplevelser. Andra är skarpa och roliga granskningar som synliggör invanda mönster och vanetänkande. Boken inspirerar till samtal och idéer om ett högaktuellt ämne.Medverkande: Aase Berg, Ulrika Dahl, Emma Eleonorasdotter, Kristin Eliasson, Jenny Engström Baron, Erik Masao Eriksson, Margaretha Fahlgren, Gabriele Griffin, Anneli Jordahl, Christian Lenemark, Merete Mazzarella, Cilla Naumann, Cecilia Pettersson, Christine Rubertsson, Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed, Anna Soltorp, Maria Svenning, Sara Sylvén, Cecilia Torudd, Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Anna Williams.

This book speaks to the meanings and values that inhere in close relations, focusing on ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ but also looking beyond these categories. Multifaceted, diverse and subject to constant debate, close relations are ubiquitous in human lives on embodied as well as symbolic levels. Closely related to processes of power, legibility and recognition, close relations are surrounded by boundaries that both constrain and enable their practical, symbolical and legal formation. Carefully contextualising close relations in relation to different national contexts, but also in relation to gender, sexuality, race, religion and dis/ability, the volume points to the importance of and variations in how close relations are lived, understood and negotiated.Grounded in a number of academic areas and disciplines, ranging from legal studies, sociology and social work to literary studies and ethnology, this volume also highlights the value of using inter- and multidisciplinary scholarly approaches in research about close relations.Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.