Price: $34.95
Page Count: 308
Publication Date: April 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77258-155-3
“Breastfeeding & Culture: Discourses and Representations reminds us that, although thought of as a “natural” activity, breastfeeding is a site of intense social interest and regulation with complex personal and political meanings and consequences. Indeed, these essays reveal that breastfeeding is caught up in discourses of biology, religion, philosophy, medicine, law, and social policy, and is represented in cultural expressions that span media forms and symbols. This volume responds to the need for interdisciplinary investigations into breastfeeding and contributes to feminist knowledges of gender, bodies, reproduction, care work, and motherhood.”
—MARY THOMPSON, Coordinator, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, James Madison University
“The topic of breastfeeding is shown in this book to both empower and out- rage mothers. The wide variety of disciplines represented in the volume make it perfect for both general and academic readers. Book clubs, mothers’ clubs, undergraduate and graduate courses in women’s studies, health education, communication and the like all would find it of value.”
—HELEN M. STERK, Professor and Head of the Department of Communication, Western Kentucky University
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Contextualizing Breastfeeding and Culture: Discourses and Representation
Ann Marie A. Short
I. HISTORICIZING CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS OF LACTATION AND BREASTFEEDING
Big Mother: Breastfeeding Rhetoric and the
Panopticon in Popular Culture, 1700 to Present
Elizabeth Johnston
“Milk for Gall”
Elizabethan Power Strategies in Macbeth
Eileen Sperry
Same-Sex Lactations in European Art and Literature (ca. 1300-1800):
Allegory, Melancholy, Loss
Jutta Sperling
Latch: The Object of the Breast Pump
Elaine McDevitt
II. REPRESENTATIONS OF LACTATION AND BREASTFEEDING IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
“That’s Not a Beer Bong; It’s a Breast Pump!” Representations of Breastfeeding in Prime-Time Fictional Television
Katherine A. Foss
(Breast)Milking the Situation: Interracial Wet-Nursing in Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose
Abigail L. Palko
Gender, Psychology, and Breastfeeding as “Perverse”:
From A Clockwork Orange to Game of Thrones
Tatiana Prorokova
“In this Whole Story, That’s the Shocking Detail?”:
Extended Breastfeeding in Emma Donoghue’s Room
Ann Marie A. Short
III. THE POLITICS OF BREASTFEEDING AND LACTATION: THE IMPLICATIONS FOR IDENTITIES
My Black Breast Friend: Breastfeeding and My Black Body
Dionne Irving
Breastfeeding in the Military: A Communicology Analysis
Patty Sotirin
Legal Representations of Breastfeeding: On Angela Ames and Sex Discrimination Dana Lloyd
The Politics of Mothers’ Milk in Modern India
Sucharita Sarkar
IV: THE CHALLENGES OF FEMINIST BREASTFEEDING AND LACTATION DISCOURSE
“We Chose the Hardest Road”: Examining
Self-Representations of the Exclusive Pumper
Lee Ann Glowzenski
Surrogacy and Breastfeeding—A Puzzle to Solve:
A Case Study on the Surrogacy Industry in India
Anindita Sengupta
Framing Breastfeeding as “Natural” Implications for Mothers’ Identities
Laura Fitzwater Gonzales
About the Contributors
Ann Marie A. Short teaches English, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Intercultural Studies at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN. Her previous publications have appeared in Literature Compass, MELUS: The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States and Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal. In addition to motherhood studies, her scholarship focuses on Anglophone postcolonial and immigrant women writers.
Abigail L. Palko is the Director of the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center at the University of Virginia. Her scholarship focuses on cultural and literary representations of mothering practices. Her book, Imagining Motherhood in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Literature, is available from Palgrave Macmillan. She co-edited Mothers, Mothering and Globalization with Dorsía Silva Smith and Laila Malik for Demeter Press. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and Demeter Press publications.
Dionne Irving’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Boulevard Magazine, The Normal School, The Crab Orchard Review, and other places. She is a professor at Saint Mary's College, a women's college in South Bend, Indiana. Currently, Irving is working on a novel set in Jamaica.
