CFP | Labor Pains: The Art and Politics of Reproductive and Domestic Work
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
EDITORS: Natalie Phillips and Cindy Torgesen
Deadline for abstracts: Monday, March 2nd, 2026 5:00pm Eastern Time
Birth, care, and maintenance have long been framed as “women’s work,” often rendered invisible, undervalued, and sanitized in visual and cultural representation. Yet they are also profound sites of creativity, power, and resistance. Labor Pains: The Art and Politics of Reproductive and Domestic Work invites essays that examine the visual cultures surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, parenting, and domestic or reproductive labor, from the sacred to the taboo, the everyday to the spectacular.
This edited volume seeks contributions that trace how artists, designers, filmmakers, and activists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have represented, contested, and reimagined the labor of making and sustaining life. We welcome work grounded in art history, visual and material culture, media studies, design history, performance, and feminist or queer theory. Essays might explore how artistic practices have visualized reproductive autonomy, the economies of care, and the politics of cleanliness, domesticity, and the body. We especially encourage intersectional and transnational approaches that address how race, class, sexuality, and disability intersect with reproductive and domestic labor.
Possible areas of focus include but are not limited to:
- Artistic and activist interventions around childbirth, parenting, or reproductive justice
- Histories of maternity, midwifery, and maternal health in visual culture
- Representations of domestic or care labor
- The aesthetics of cleaning, maintenance, and domestic technologies
- Visual rhetorics of gendered labor, intimacy, and bodily discipline
- Reproductive technologies, biopolitics, and ecofeminist perspectives
- Art practices engaging fertility or loss
- The proposed length of each chapter will be 6000-8000 words.
Please send your 300-word abstract and a short bio to both Natalie Phillips nephillips@bsu.edu and Cindy Torgesen at cetorgesen@ung.edu
Deadline for abstracts: Monday, March 2nd, 2026 5:00pm Eastern Time
[ssba]
EDITORS: Natalie Phillips and Cindy Torgesen
Deadline for abstracts: Monday, March 2nd, 2026 5:00pm Eastern Time
Birth, care, and maintenance have long been framed as “women’s work,” often rendered invisible, undervalued, and sanitized in visual and cultural representation. Yet they are also profound sites of creativity, power, and resistance. Labor Pains: The Art and Politics of Reproductive and Domestic Work invites essays that examine the visual cultures surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, parenting, and domestic or reproductive labor, from the sacred to the taboo, the everyday to the spectacular.
This edited volume seeks contributions that trace how artists, designers, filmmakers, and activists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have represented, contested, and reimagined the labor of making and sustaining life. We welcome work grounded in art history, visual and material culture, media studies, design history, performance, and feminist or queer theory. Essays might explore how artistic practices have visualized reproductive autonomy, the economies of care, and the politics of cleanliness, domesticity, and the body. We especially encourage intersectional and transnational approaches that address how race, class, sexuality, and disability intersect with reproductive and domestic labor.
Possible areas of focus include but are not limited to:
- Artistic and activist interventions around childbirth, parenting, or reproductive justice
- Histories of maternity, midwifery, and maternal health in visual culture
- Representations of domestic or care labor
- The aesthetics of cleaning, maintenance, and domestic technologies
- Visual rhetorics of gendered labor, intimacy, and bodily discipline
- Reproductive technologies, biopolitics, and ecofeminist perspectives
- Art practices engaging fertility or loss
- The proposed length of each chapter will be 6000-8000 words.
Please send your 300-word abstract and a short bio to both Natalie Phillips nephillips@bsu.edu and Cindy Torgesen at cetorgesen@ung.edu
Deadline for abstracts: Monday, March 2nd, 2026 5:00pm Eastern Time
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