Location: United Kingdom Call for Papers Deadline: 2003-03-31 Date Submitted: 2003-02-10 Fathers have figured in studies of the family, gender relations and masculinity and yet have rarely been the central subjects of investigation. T

Location: United Kingdom
Call for Papers Deadline: 2003-03-31
Date Submitted: 2003-02-10


Fathers have figured in studies of the family, gender relations and masculinity and yet have rarely been the central subjects of investigation. This interdisciplinary conference brings together research on the experiences, meanings and representations of paternity in different societies and cultures. Exploring the many aspects of fathers’ lives and their relationships with others, both inside and outside the family, the conference also examines how discourses and practices of fatherhood have shaped ideas about the individual, society and modernity, from the seventeenth century to the present.



Papers might include:


the diversity of paternal roles (e.g. single parenthood, widower-hood, step-fatherhood and grand-fatherhood)

gender, paternity and parenthood

negotiating spousal and parental roles

father-child relations

genetics and inheritance

separation and the loss of the father

intimacy, distance and commitment

work, migration and kinship roles

fatherhood, social power and social exclusion

patriarchy, paternalism and the politics of fatherhood

fathers, the law and the state

ideology, advice and prescription

fatherhood and masculinity

autobiography and family history

religion, psychoanalysis and the symbolic power of the father

fictional, imagined and ideal fathers

theorising fatherhood.

Speakers include:

Megan Doolittle (Open University)
Claudia Nelson (Southwest Texas State)
David Morgan (Manchester, NTNU, Trondheim )
John Tosh (Roehampton)