Runaway Moms: Mothers Who Leave their Families in Twenty-First-Century
December 1st, 3 PM, room 402
We are inviting you to the lecture “Runaway Moms: Mothers Who Leave their Families in Twenty-First-Century” by Jenny Björklund, Professor of Gender Studies at Uppsala University which will take place on December 1, 4 PM (EET) at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University (Vokiečių str. 10), room 402 (4th floor). The lecture will also be streamed online – over the Facebook page of the VU IIRPS.
The event will be moderated by Assoc. Prof. Eglė Kačkutė (Faculty of Philology).
The lecture asks what it means that so many mothers leave their families in twenty-first-century Swedish literature? The lecture takes this question as its point of departure and explores how novels about mothers who leave can be understood as queer resistance against Swedish-branded ideals of parenthood, family, and reproduction.
Jenny Björklund is a Professor of Gender Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her current research deals with cultural representations of in/voluntary childlessness, and reproductive decision-making and climate change. Her books include Maternal Abandonment and Queer Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Swedish Literature (2021) and Lesbianism in Swedish Literature: An Ambiguous Affair (2014). Her work has also appeared in Social Science and Medicine, Women’s Studies, Scandinavian Studies, and Contemporary Women’s Writing.
The event is part of the Vilnius University gender research seminar series. Seminar series are organized by Feminist Politics and Critical Theory Research Group at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science and Thinking Motherhood research group at the Faculty of Philology.
Jenny Björklund has been awarded the Vilnius University Teaching and Learning Internationalisation Initiatives funding for the initiative Gender and Motherhood Studies and Research in the Baltic Sea Region. As part of this initiative in collaboration with the Horizon 2020 project MotherNet, she will deliver seminars to BA and MA students, of the Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University (in English and Swedish), will consult BA and MA students of the Faculty of Philology, on their final theses.
The visit of Prof. Jenny Björklund is a part of the project “Developing a New Network of Researchers on Contemporary European Motherhood (MotherNet)”. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 952366.
