Lena Šimić – författare

Mothering Performance is a combination of scholarly essays and creative responses which focus on maternal performance and its applications from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. This collection extends the concept and action of ‘performance’ and connects it to the idea of ‘mothering’ as activity. Mothering, as a form of doing, is a site of never-ending political and personal production; it is situated in a specific place, and it is undertaken by specific bodies, marked by experience and context. The authors explore the potential of a maternal sensibility to move us towards maternal action that is explicitly political, ethical, and in relation to our others. Presented in three sections, Exchange, Practice, and Solidarity, the book includes international contributions from scholars and artists covering topics including ecology, migration, race, class, history, incarceration, mental health, domestic violence, intergenerational exchange, childcare, and peacebuilding. The collection gathers diverse maternal performance practices and methodologies which address aesthetics, dramaturgy, activism, pregnancy, everyday mothering, and menopause. The book is a great read for artists, maternal health and care professionals, and scholars. Researchers with an interest in feminist performance and motherhood, within the disciplines of performance studies, maternal studies, and women’s studies, and all those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of maternal experience, will find much of interest.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by University of South Wales

Mothering Performance is a combination of scholarly essays and creative responses which focus on maternal performance and its applications from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. This collection extends the concept and action of ‘performance’ and connects it to the idea of ‘mothering’ as activity. Mothering, as a form of doing, is a site of never-ending political and personal production; it is situated in a specific place, and it is undertaken by specific bodies, marked by experience and context. The authors explore the potential of a maternal sensibility to move us towards maternal action that is explicitly political, ethical, and in relation to our others. Presented in three sections, Exchange, Practice, and Solidarity, the book includes international contributions from scholars and artists covering topics including ecology, migration, race, class, history, incarceration, mental health, domestic violence, intergenerational exchange, childcare, and peacebuilding. The collection gathers diverse maternal performance practices and methodologies which address aesthetics, dramaturgy, activism, pregnancy, everyday mothering, and menopause. The book is a great read for artists, maternal health and care professionals, and scholars. Researchers with an interest in feminist performance and motherhood, within the disciplines of performance studies, maternal studies, and women’s studies, and all those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of maternal experience, will find much of interest.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by University of South Wales

Maternal Performance: Feminist Relations bridges the fields of performance, feminism, maternal studies, and ethics. It loosely follows the life course with chapters on maternal loss, pregnancy, birth, aftermath, maintenance, generations, and futures. Performance and the maternal have an affinity as both are lived through the body of the mother/artist, are played out in real time, and are concerned with creating ethical relationships with an other – be that other the child, the theatrical audience, or our wider communities. The authors contend that maternal performance takes the largely hidden, private and domestic work of mothering and makes it worthy of consideration and contemplation within the public sphere.