Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures

Acknowledgements

ix Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts is the product of many people whose efforts supporting and producing the collection we wish to acknowledge here. To the more than one hundred scholars who submitted proposals in response to our call for papers, and who thus underscored the vital timeliness of this work on motherhood and literatures, we express both our gratitude for their interest and our apologies that we could not include them all. To our twenty contributors, we extend our congratulations for their compelling scholarship and our appreciation for their eager and patient willingness to work with us and with our Laurier Press editors in bringing their chapters to final form. We are indebted to Jacqueline Larson, who as acquisitions editor for the Press first put the proposed collection under contract, and to her successor, Lisa Quinn, for her continuing commitment to the project. Lisa’s unfailing support and encouragement throughout the various stages has been invaluable . We recognize the enormous amount of time offered by the two readers for the Press, and thank them for their insights and suggestions, which were most helpful to us as we made our revisions. We value the efforts of Rob Kohlmeier, managing editor; Marcia Gallego, copy editor; and Leslie Macredie , website and marketing coordinator, who came aboard in the latter stages of production and who worked so efficiently and creatively. We are, as Acknowledgements x acknowledgements well, most grateful for the financial support provided by the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program (ASPP). Podnieks would like to thank Ryerson University for its ongoing support of her research, specifically through two grants: a Ryerson SSHRC Institutional Grant and a Ryerson Faculty of Arts SRC Fund Research Grant, which afforded her the time and resources to research and write her chapter as well as to co-author the introduction and to co-edit the entire collection . Her work has been facilitated by conscientious and dedicated research assistants Christopher Richardson and Carolyn Winters. Podnieks owes everything to her family: her brother and sister-in-law Andrew and MaryJane Podnieks; her aunt, Mairi Macdonald; and her husband, Ian Smith, for being everywhere every step of the way. This collection would likely not have occurred to her had it not been for three folks: her own mother, Elizabeth Podnieks, who shows her every day what it means to mother; and her own two children, Zachary Smith and Emily Smith, who inspire all things maternal . O’ReillywouldliketothanktheSocialScienceResearchCouncilofCanada and its continued support of her research though various grants, most notably the Standard Research Grant and the International Opportunities Fund grant. Special thanks are due to my brilliant research assistants Sarah Trimble,MelissaNurse,AylaLefkowich,andtomyremarkableproofreader, Randy Chase. All scholars should be so blessed. Thank you to the members of the Association for Research on Mothering: my thinking on mothering, as always, was enriched and sustained by this splendid community of scholars . A particular word of thanks to my early mentors in women’s literature: Elizabeth Sabiston,EleanorHine,Leslie Sanders,RustyShteir,andBarbara Godard: thank you for causing me to fall in love with women’s literature and saving me from a degree in economics. Special thanks to Renée Knapp at ARM, who comforts and commiserates when I need these the most. And as always, my deepest gratitude to my family, in particular my mother, Jean O’Reilly; my sister Jennifer O’Reilly; my children, Jesse, Erin, and Casey O’Reilly-Conlin; and my partner, Terry Conlin. They continue to inspire and sustain my maternal story. We would, in the end, like to thank each other. We conceived the project at one of the many conferences hosted by the Association for Research on Mothering, and developed it in due course over numerous meetings and phone calls, not to mention hundreds of emails between ourselves as well as our contributors from disparate global parts. In dialogue with a host of maternal scholars, we have gathered individual practices, theories, and ex- xi acknowledgements periences of diverse writers and mothers into this collection. As colleagues and as friends we have been stimulated, challenged, and rewarded throughout this whole process, just as we hope this book will do the same for our readers, in turn. elizabeth podnieks and andrea o’reilly This page intentionally left blank ...