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Mothers of Invention
Film, Media, and Caregiving Labor
Edited by So Mayer and Corinn Columpar
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Book Presentation:
Examines the role that parenting, as a theme and practice, plays in film and media cultures.
Mothers of Invention: Film, Media, and Caregiving Laborconstructs a feminist genealogy that foregrounds the relationship between acts of production on the one hand and reproduction on the other. In this interdisciplinary collection, editors So Mayer and Corinn Columpar bring together film and media studies with parenting studies to stake out a field, or at least a conversation, that is thick with historical and theoretical dimension and invested in cultural and methodological plurality.
In four sections and sixteen contributions, the manuscript reflects on how caregiving shapes the work of filmmakers, how parenting is portrayed on screen, and how media contributes to radical new forms of care and expansive definitions of mothering. Featuring an exciting array of approaches—including textual analysis, industry studies, ethnographic research, production histories, and personal reflection—Mothers of Invention is a multifaceted collection of feminist work that draws on the methods of both the humanities and the social sciences, as well as the insights borne of both scholarship and lived experience. Grounding this inquiry is analysis of a broad range of texts with global reach—from
the films Bashu, The Little Stranger (Bahram Beyzai, 1989), Prevenge (Alice Lowe, 2016), and A
Deal with the Universe (Jason Barker, 2018) to the television series Top of the Lake (2013–2017)
and Jane the Virgin (2014–2019), among others—as well as discussion of the creative practices,
be they related to production, pedagogy, curation, or critique, employed by a wide variety of film
and media artists and/or scholars.
Mothers of Invention demonstrates how the discourse of parenting and caregiving allows the discipline to
expand its discursive frameworks to address, and redress, current theoretical, political, and social debates about the interlinked futures of work and the world. This collection belongs on the bookshelves of students and scholars of cinema and media studies, feminist and queer media studies, labor studies, filmmaking and production, and cultural studies.
About the authors:
So Mayer is a writer, bookseller, film curator, and organizer.Corinn Columpar is associate professor of cinema studies at the University of Toronto.
Press Reviews:
What a timely collection on parenting, caregiving—and especially mothering—in film and media cultures. Contributors examine not just representations of motherhood and maternity onscreen, but working conditions for mothers and caregivers in media industries, mothering as a form of media labor and media consumption, and the radical possibilities of feminized caregiving on set, in the classroom, and at home.
-Shelley Stamp, Author of Movie-Struck Girls and Lois Weber in Early Hollywood
This gathering of outstanding film and media scholars and makers demonstrates how becoming and recognizing mothers—quite literally the oldest job in the world—has changed and challenged their work. Here the fusion of their personal experience, art-making, and scholarship breathes new life into disciplinary methods.
-Amelie Hastie, Author of Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection, and Film History
Never has the media industry been in greater need of attention. In Mothers of Invention, Mayer and Columpar approach this challenge—with care. They propose a refocused media scholarship that turns the spotlight from longstanding discourses of innovation to reveal the foundational underpinnings of the industry, labours of caregiving. This wide-ranging collection of essays effortlessly models what it means to care and the manifold benefits of caring about care, carers, and caregiving in global audiovisual industries.
-Deb Verhoeven, Canada 150 Research Chair, University of Alberta
See the publisher website: Wayne State University Press
> From the same authors:
There She Goes (2009)
Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond
Dir. Corinn Columpar and So Mayer
Subject: Sociology
> On a related topic:
The Routledge Handbook of Motherhood on Screen (2025)
Dir. Susan Liddy and Deirdre Flynn
Subject: Sociology
Home Is Where the Hurt Is (2019)
Media Depictions of Wives and Mothers
by Sara Hosey
Subject: Sociology
From Happy Homemaker to Desperate Housewives (2012)
Motherhood and Popular Television
Subject: Sociology
The Animated Dad (2024)
Essays on Father Figures in Cartoon Television
Dir. Lorin Shahinian and Leslie Salas
Subject: Sociology
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