Special Session

French and Francophone / Gender and Sexuality

Catherine Montfort (Santa Clara University)
cmon@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This session, co-sponsored by Women in French, explores the complex, multifaceted representations of motherhood across centuries of French and Francophone literature and film. From the fiercely devoted to the deeply destructive, maternal figures have long served as central subjects for examining identity, power, societal expectations, and emotional trauma. This panel investigates the various ways mothers are written, filmed, and conceptualized—including the unique perspective of mother-writers (mères écrivains) navigating their own dual identities. We welcome a wide range of theoretical and historical approaches to the maternal figure as an object of profound affection, intense hostility, or creative negotiation. Proposals in French, English, or a combination of the two are welcome.

French and Francophone authors and filmmakers have dealt with mothers from the seventeenth century onward, creating a plethora of material. Maternal dynamics have consistently served as a vital lens for exploring domestic, psychological, and cultural anxieties across different eras—from the intimate correspondence of Madame de Sévigné and the domestic critiques of Flaubert, to the twentieth- and twenty-first-century reflections of Simone de Beauvoir, Hervé Bazin, Amélie Nothomb, Marie Nimier, and Albert Cohen.

"Les mères en littérature et films francophones" seeks to gather scholars to interrogate the evolving spectrum of the maternal archetype. We invite papers that examine any aspect of the "loved mother" or the "hated mother," as well as the unique artistic aesthetics that arise when women write about motherhood from the inside out.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

· The idealized vs. the monstrous mother in narrative and cinema.

· The maternal voice and the creative process (l'écriture féminine and the mother-writer).

· Psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer approaches to maternal relationships.

· Colonial and postcolonial motherhood in Francophone contexts.

· The mother as an agent or victim of societal power structures.

Proposals in French, English, or a combination of the two are welcome.