The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM)
invites you to join
MOTHER OUTLAWS
"Mother Outlaws recognize that mothers and children benefit when the mother lives her life, and practices mothering, from a position of agency, authority, authenticity and autonomy"
--Andrea O’Reilly, Mother Outlaws
Mother Outlaws are community gatherings in the Toronto area for women interested in discussing current motherhood issues from a feminist perspective and sharing the links between their own mothering practices and social change. The gatherings primarily occur at members’ homes in the Toronto area for a potluck dinner and informal discussion on a specific topic or at scheduled special events.
For more information - including how a Mother Outlaws chapter can be launched in other communities/cities/countries - please contact, ARM Community Outreach Coordinator, Linn Baran at linnbaran@sympatico.ca.
We are also in the process of planning our 2009 Mother Outlaws Speakers series and are interested in hearing from individuals who would like to present their work at our community events. Please forward inquiries and abstracts about your scholarly work, activism, writing, art, etc on feminist mothering to linnbaran@sympatico.ca.
Mother Outlaws T-Shirts Now Available.
Click here to get the order form.
In conjunction with Mother Outlaws, the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) has established the FEMINIST MOMS GROUP - a NEW informal discussion group featuring a wide range of topics and issues focused around feminist mothering, to be held regularly every month or every other month in ARM members' homes. Each meeting will have a stated topic and/or theme.
All women interested in participating in a warm and open discussion on feminist mothering are encouraged to attend! New Coordinator - Tania Jivraj.
Discussion Question/Topic: What does genderless parenting look like? Is it possible? Do we want it?
Date: Sunday, November 22nd
Time: 7:30-9:30 pm
Location: Please let me know if you would like to host!
RSVP: taniajivraj@gmail.com
*Please bring a dessert or snack to share.
Childcare is not provided, but babes in arms are welcome.
We are thrilled to announce that a Mother Outlaw group has been established in London Ontario.
For more info contact Shawna Lewkowitz shawna@syncreo.com
Mamapalooza Toronto and the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM)/Mother Outlaws present
Mamapalooza Mother’s Day Celebration Event
Sunday, May 10th at Bread & Circus Theatre
Kensington Market, Toronto
1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
We will be having rock bands, poets, and artists perform their work and passion related to women and mothering.
Full event details are included in the attached flyer.
2007-08 DATES
THE ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH ON MOTHERING, DEMETER PRESS & MOTHER OUTLAWS present:
Click here to download the poster (Large PDF)
Speaker Series Events
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Mothering, Religion and Spirituality
The Ralph Thornton Centre
765 Queen Street East,
3rd floor (Queen/Saulter, East of Broadview Avenue)
7:00pm- 9:30 pm
Free!
Featured Speakers:
` Spiritual Mothering: A Journey of Awakening`
Christine Jonas-Simpson , Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health, School of Nursing at York University and an Adjunct Researcher with the Women’s College Research Institute in Toronto.
"Ancient Birth Goddesses and their Symbols"
Johanna H. Stuckey, University Professor Emerita in Humanities, Women's Studies, and Religious Studies, York University.
"Motherhood in the Christian Tradition: What Virgins, Martyrs, Mystics & Reformers have Taught us about Motherhood"
Becky R. Lee, Associate Professor, York University.
TITLE TBA
Helen Ziral, Adult Education; Collaborative Program in Women and Gender Studies at OISE/UT
ARM journals and Demeter Press book titles will be available for purchase.
Please join us at this special event!!!
Click here to download the flyer.
Past Events
November 18
To launch our current journal, Mothers and Daughters,
The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) presents…
The 10th instalment of our 2008 Mother Outlaws Speaker Series
Feminist Mother Lines: Connections and Dis/Connections
An Evening of Discussion, Poetry and Visual Art
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Ralph Thornton Centre
765 Queen Street East (Queen/Saulter, East of Broadview Avenue)
7:00pm-10:00pm
Free!
Featured Speakers:
Linn Baran (Host and Mother Outlaws Coordinator),
“Mother Outlaws: Connecting with a Feminist Community in the Mother’hood”
Fiona J. Green (Chair of the Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Winnipeg), “Matroreform: Feminist Mothers and their Daughters Creating Feminist Motherlines”
Laura Lewis (Professor in the School of Social Work at the University Of Western Ontario), “Accessing the Mother Within: Midlife Daughter’s Use of Maternal Belongings in Mourning their Lost Mother”
Tamara Toledo (Chilean born Toronto visual artist, curator and educator),
“My Mother- My Guardian Angel: The Uncertainty of Exile and Memory”
In addition, the evening will include a celebration of poetry by, about and for mothers…
“mother lines”
..including the winners of ARM’s 2008 Literary Contest on the theme of mothers and daughters.
ARM journals and Demeter Press book titles will be available for purchase
Please join us at this special event!!!
York's Association for Research on Mothering speaker series on tonight, YFile, November 18, 2008
October 23
VIOLENCE, MILITARISM AND SOCIAL JUSTICE PANEL
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Junior Common Room 014 (lower level),
McLaughlin College, York University (Keele Campus)
7:00pm-9:00pm Free! Open to Public!
Featuring: Sarah Ruddick (author of Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace)
Flavia Cherry ((Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA)
Tiisetso Russell (OISE/University of Toronto)
Click here for the flyer!
Click here for a the conference program in PDF.
“Maternal Activism/Activist Mothering Panel”
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Featuring:
Enola Aird (The Motherhood Project) and Pegeen Reichert-Powell (Columbia College)
“New Frontiers in Maternal Activism”
The mothers’ movement in the United States is currently aimed at gaining increased societal support for mothers and the work of nurturing children. The agendas of mothers’ groups are, understandably, focused principally on issues of work and family. But a dazzling array of new issues raise fundamental questions that should concern mothers. This presentation will discuss two new arenas that call for activist mothering: the commercialization of childhood and the commodification of human beings.
Enola G. Aird is an activist mother. A graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School, she is a Visiting Scholar at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston, Massachussetts, and Founder and Director of the Motherhood Project, based at the Institute for American Values in New York City. Working with members of the Motherhood Project's Mother's Council, she has helped launch a mothers' campaign against the commercialization of childhood, design a large-scale national study of mothers that pointed to key elements of a mothers' agenda for social change, and convene a national symposium of mothers across the spectrum to help pave the way for an end to the media-generated "mommy wars." She is currently working to help bring mothers' voices into the national and international conversation about new technologies that could alter the human species. She is the mother of two children.
"The Mothers' Movement Moving Forward"
In this talk, I borrow an activist’s vocabulary from the Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of local citizen groups, to consider how the principles and practices of these groups might inform mothering activism. Specifically, I focus on four terms—power, relationships, self-interest, and disorganizaton—to think about a way forward for the mothers’ movement.
Pegeen Reichert Powell received her Ph.D. in English from Miami University (Oxford, OH), and is now a faculty member in the English Department at Columbia College Chicago. She is co-editing with Jocelyn Fenton Stitt a collection of essays about mothering, Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Interpersonal and Public Discourse (under contract with SUNY Press). In addition to mothering studies, her research interests include pedagogy, critical discourse analysis, and retention in higher education.
June 18
The Association for Research on Mothering and Mother Outlaws are proud to announce:
Navigating work and family: Dad's experience
Dr. Kerry Daly provides us with an interesting look at the unique challenges men encounter in their efforts to harmonize both their work and family lives. His lecture will also focus on how fathers navigate through parenting dynamics, the culture of masculinity as well as workplace policies and practices.
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Kerry Daly is the Associate Dean of Research in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, a Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition and is one of the founding directors of the Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being all at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He received his PhD in Sociology from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. He is Director of the Father Involvement Research Alliance CURA project, a Canadian national organization of researchers, practitioners and policy makers. His current research interests focus on the changing practices of fatherhood, the way that families negotiate and navigate time pressures in their lives, and the challenges families face in trying to harmonize their work and family life. He is married and a father of 2 young adults.
Click here to download a PDF version of the flyer.
Thursday, May 8
Carework and Caregiving Panel and Launch of ARM Journal Vol. 10.1 , “Carework and Caregiving”
Contributors include: Margrit Eichler, Patrizia Albanese and Willa Liu; Magdalena Ortega Suarez; and Judi Thacker-Magee.
Click here to see the flyer.
(M)Other (a performance)
Performance by Beth Osnes
Click here for the press release (PDF).
When:
Saturday, April 26: 7-10pm
“Stunningly beautiful”— Dance Magazine
(M)other explores what it might take to get the people of one nation to authentically care about the children and families of other nations. Seven mothers from seven nations from around the world are required by their governments to swap their six month old babies with another mother from another nation for one month. What follows is an intimate look at these mothers’ experiences and their eventual realization of their interconnectedness.
“…rich, clever and empowering.” - Daily Camera
March 8, 2008
Mother Outlaws will be marching in the Toronto IWD March on March 8th.
We will meet outside OISE auditorium after rally - just before 12. Rally begins at 11Am Oise address is 252 Bloor St (at St.George Subway Station) AFTER the rally...LOOK FOR OUR BANNER IN B/W.
February 26, 2008
The Association for Research on Mothering
invites you to their monthly Mother Outlaws speaker’s series
“Mother Outlaws recognize that mothers and children benefit when the mother lives her life, and practices mothering, from a position of agency, authority, authenticity and autonomy”
It Can’t Just Be One Day
What Families Really Want…What Families Really Need
With the introduction of the statutory holiday, "Family Day" on the third Monday of February, it would appear that our current government is acknowledging the importance of families in all their diversity.
However, reports from the field of anti-poverty activism reveal there are many current issues that families face which our current government does not actively support.. This evening’s guest panel will address issues of social inclusion while discussing the real barriers that many families face in their daily lives. Together, we hope to explore ways to overcome these barriers and increase the community capacity and social inclusion of all mothers with young children in current social policy decision-making.
Guest Panel:
Deborah Konecny, Program Coordinator, Families are Important Resources, Family Service Association of Toronto
Ann Decter, National Coordinator (Campaign 2000) and author of the recent report on homeless families -“Lost in the Shuffle”
Linn Baran , Community Outreach Coordinator, Mother Outlaws, Association for Research on Mothering
Tuesday, February 26 6:30- 9:30 pm
Ralph Thornton Centre, 765 Queen Street East (east of Boadview), 3rd Floor
For more information and to RSVP , please contact: linnbaran@sympatico.ca
January 29, 2008
Please join us for the next Mother Outlaw meeting:
Tuesday, January 29th - 7-10pm
at a member's home in Beaches/East end of Toronto
Please RSVP to Mother Outlaws Coordinator, Linn Baran - linnbaran@sympatico.ca for directions and more information.
“This is what a Feminist Mother Looks Like”
In 2007, feminists experienced an unprecedented onslaught of backlash. The media would have us believe that feminism once again became the "F word" no-one wanted to acknowledge nor discuss , not to mention claim as their guiding principles. However, mothers who strongly identify as feminists have a lot to say (and share) on important issues. Please join other “Mother Outlaws” at this Feminist Motherhood Speak Easy and OUT.
***Attendants are asked to share with others their answers to the Feminist Motherhood Meme (c/o of Blue Milk Mother)
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How would you describe your feminism in one sentence? When did you become a feminist? Was it before or after you became a mother?
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What has surprised you most about motherhood?
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How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?
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What makes your mothering feminist? How does your approach differ from a non-feminist mothers? How does feminism impact upon your parenting?
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Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist mother? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist mother?
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Has identifying as a feminist mother ever been difficult? Why?
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Motherhood involves sacrifice, how do you reconcile that with being a feminist?
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If you have a partner, how does your partner feel about your feminist motherhood? What is the impact of your feminism on your partner?
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If you’re an attachment parenting mother, what challenges if any does this pose for your feminism and how have you resolved them?
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Do you feel feminism has failed mothers and if so how? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers?
http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/what-does-a-feminist-mother-look-like/
Monday, November 12, 2007
Please join us!
Book Launch Celebration
White Ink:
Poems on Mothers and Motherhood
edited by Rishma Dunlop, published by Demeter Press White Ink
Monday, November 12, 2007
7-10 pm
Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, Gladstone Hotel,
1214 Queen St. W., Toronto
Poetry readings, refreshments served. Cash bar
http://www.yorku.ca/arm/whiteink.html
Contact Renée Knapp, 416-736-2100 Ext. 60366 or arm@yorku.ca
Edited by poet Rishma Dunlop, White Ink is a unique collection of poems on mothers and motherhood, by some of the finest poets of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Unsentimental, unflinching, and edgy, White Ink registers the social and political changes, as well as the imaginative pulse, of recent history through the figure of the mother: a powerful, recurring, and central symbol in contemporary poetry. Spanning multiple cultures, ethnicities, genders, and languages, White Ink is a landmark anthology.
Poets and translators include Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Alicia Ostriker, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Joy Harjo, Sharon Olds, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gwendolyn McEwan, Rosemary Sullivan, Patrick Lane, Lorna Crozier, Allen Ginsberg, Irving Layton, Priscila Uppal, Bronwen Wallace, Maxine Kumin, Sandra Gilbert, Grace Paley, Brenda Hillman, John Barton, Samuel Menashe, Richard Teleky, Margo Berdeshevsky, Marilyn Hacker, Steven Heighton, John Terpstra, John Barton, C.D.
Wright, Cherrie Moraga, Natasha Trethewey, Rita Dove, Adrienne Rich, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Nicole Brossard, Annie Finch, Beth Ann Fennelly, Mimi Khalvati, Marie Ponsot, Mahmoud Darwish, Susan Musgrave, Susan Holbrook, Fady Joudah, Naomi Shihab Nye, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Deema Shehabi, Claudia Rankine, Liesl Jobson, Clarinda Harriss, Ingrid de Kok, Gabeba Baderoon, Carolyn Forché, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Cati Porter, Diane Lockward, Judith Arcana, Judith Montgomery, Wanda Coleman, Celia Lisset Alvarez, Philip Levine, Jean Valentine, Sina Queyras, Meena Alexander, Goran Simic, Yerra Sugarman, Nina Bogin, Agha Shahid Ali, and many others.
Rishma Dunlop is the author of three acclaimed books of poetry: Metropolis (2005), Reading like a Girl (2004), and The Body of My Garden (2002). She is co-editor with Priscila Uppal, of Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets (2004). Her radio drama, “The Raj Kumari’s Lullaby,” was commissioned and produced by CBC Radio. Her awards include the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003 and she was a finalist for the CBC Canada Council Literary Awards in 1998. Her work has been funded by The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and Canada Arts Council. Her essays, poetry, reviews, and keynote lectures have been published internationally in literary and scholarly journals. Rishma Dunlop is the Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program in English at York University, Toronto.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
“Raising Outlaws--Beyond the Boundaries of "The Good Mother"
by Mary Kay Blakely (University of Missouri-Columbus)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
7-9 pm
Courtyard Marriott Hotel, room TBA
475 Yonge Street, Toronto
Free to ARM members.
$20 regular admission.
$10 for students/seniors/unwaged.
Click here for the flyer (PDF)
September 26, 2007
“Othermothering: Challenges and Rewards"
by Wanda Thomas Bernard
(Dalhousie University)
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
6:30-8:30 pm
Room 004, Harry Leith Room (basement level)
Atkinson College, 96 Pond Rd
(Pond Rd and Sentinel at main campus)
Click here for the flyer (PDF)
August 14, 2007
A MOTHER OUTLAWS’ DINNER and THEATRE EVENT
A feminist revival of Caryl Churchill‘s TOP GIRLS.
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007
The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) and Mother Outlaws
are hosting a panel in celebration of Mother’s Day and International Day of Families
“Unbecoming Mothers:
Redefining Motherhood and Family for the 21st Century”
FEATURING:
Joanna Radbord, lesbian feminist mother, lawyer with the firm of Martha McCarthy & Company.
Lesbian Mothers and the Law
Andrea O’Reilly, Associate Professor, Women’s Studies, York University, author of
Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Feminism, Motherhood and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering“Worth it in the end”: The Rewards and Risks of Feminist Mothering
Diana Gustafson, Assistant Professor, Social Science and Health in the Faculty of Medicine and affiliate faculty in the Women’s Studies Program at Memorial University, author of Unbecoming Mothers: the Social Construction of Maternal Absence.
“To be or not to be”: Questioning the Decision to be a Non-Resident Mother
D. Memee Lavell-Harvard, President of the Ontario Native Women’s Association, co-editor ‘Until our Hearts are on the Ground’: Aboriginal Mothering, Oppression, Resistance and Rebirth
The (Ab)Original Mother Outlaw: Celebrating Traditional Aboriginal Culture as a Source of Modern Feminine Power
*this panel is the first in a year-long “Speakers Series” of Mother Outlaws feminist mothers’ group. Please join us!
Monday, April 23, 2007 - 7-10 pm
“Mothering and Activism / Activist Mothers”
Discussed the challenges involved in being both an activist and a mother.
What does it mean to put feminist theory into practice in our lives as mothers and community activists interested in social justice?
Shared resources and strategies for grassroots organizing and how we can make the connections between our own personal activist work and the larger mothers movement.
International Women’s Day Event (March 8, 2007)
Nightwood Theatre's FemCab: The Five Minute Feminist Cabaret
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Mommy Wars : The Rhetoric and the Reality
A Screening and Panel Discussion about the broader social, economic and cultural significance of the personal choices and constraints mothers experience in balancing their working lives with their caregiving responsibilities. Of particular interest to participants was how the opt –out myth has become a powerful news story that is being deployed in current and regressive social policies affecting families.
Guest Panel:
Linn Baran, Mother Outlaws Coordinator (Moderator)
Michelle Melles, Senior Segment Producer, Sex TV-City TV
Andrea O’Reilly, Director of ARM, Professor, Women’s Studies, York University
Brenda Cossman, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Click here to see some pictures of the event.
Monday, January 29, 2007 , 7-10 pm
"Mothering For Schooling"
Discussion of the extensive and often "invisible" mothering work that is involved in maintaining the infrastructure of local public schools. Special guest speaker was Annie Kidder, director of People for Education (pictured above).
Association for Research on Mothering
206T Founders, York University,
4700 Keele Street Toronto, ON, Canada, M3J 1P3
Phone: (416) 736-2100 x60366 FAX: (416) 736-5766
Email: arm@yorku.ca
