Mothering and Literacies

This collection explores the connections between mothering/motherhood and literacy as it is broadly defined. Literacy, in this case, encompasses reading/writing literacy as well as multimodal, new or digital, and contested multiliteracies that are socioculturally situated and contextually defined. Mothers are often the object of cultural and popular discourses on family literacy, as well as targets in international campaigns to increase literacy learning. There has been little scholarly attention paid to how mothers in diverse sociocultural contexts do literacy, or how literacies have been mediated or challenged by mothers and motherhood. By critically examining the connections between mothers and literacies, this collection opens up a new area of inquiry that bridges education, feminist studies, and cultural studies. Contributors to this collection explore these connections in pieces that are, at turns, highly personal and intimate, political and timely, and far-reaching. Cross-disciplinary forays into international adoption, high-risk childbirth, the blogosphere, women s health, family literacy campaigns, phonics, and visual literacies make real the negotiations between mother-selves and literate lives