Maternal Performance

Motherhood is lived in the moment and in all of time’ state Lena Šimić and Emily Underwood-Lee in their dazzling book on maternal performance that defies categorisation. Putting into conversation the complex histories of feminist theorising about motherhood, and an array of contemporary maternal performance, this extraordinary work is inventive, personal, strident, scholarly, political and profound in equal measure, and quietly moving in unexpected ways.

-Lisa Baraitser, Professor of Psychosocial Theory, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London

What a joy to read a text that so fully embodies the idea of maternal performance, not only through extensive scholarly inquiry but also through conversational, relational, and epistolary engagement between the authors. Lena Šimić and Emily Underwood-Lee offer an important model of feminist maternal scholarship alongside nuanced understandings of what maternal performance can entail.

-         - Rachel Epp Buller, Associate Professor in Visual Arts and Design,Bethel College, US
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.

Lena Šimić is a Reader in Drama at Edge Hill University. Her research areas include contemporary performance practice, live art, art activism, feminist theatre and performance, and critical arts practice in relation to climate crisis, ecology and environment.

Emily Underwood-Lee is Associate Professor in Performance Studies at the University South Wales. Her work focuses on amplifying little heard personal stories. She has a particular interest in the performance of the maternal, gender, health/illness and heritage.