The Influence of Absent/Present Mothers on Daughters in Fadia Faqir’s My Name Is Salma and Willow Trees Don’t Weep

This study demonstrates the influence of absent/present mothers on their daughters in Jordanian-British Fadia Faqir’s novels My Name Is Salma (2007) and Willow Trees Don’t Weep (2014). It manifests the difference between the positive and negative impacts of the mothers of Salma and Najwa, the two heroines in the two novels under discussion, respectively. The study also exposes the difference between Salma and Najwa based on their fragmentation and its intricate interconnection with their mothers, the way they deal with their mothers’ belongings, and the effect of the memories of their mothers on their self-formation. As it does so, the study highlights how each one of these heroines utilizes her mother’s influence on her to achieve self-formation in her own way as she crosses borders. Through its focus on the mother-daughter bond in both novels, the study concludes that despite the mother’s physical absence, her evident presence turns out to be inescapable; the positive influence of Salma’s absent mother helps Salma recollect herself, and the negative influence of Najwa’s absent mother helps Najwa shape her new identity.

Creating a family through surrogacy: Negotiating parental positions, familial boundaries and kinship practices

This article focuses on male same-sex couples who fulfil their wish for a child through gestational surrogacy. As two-father families they must engage with society’s expectation that every child has both a mother and a father. Thus, the position of the mother must be filled, or at least accounted for. The empirical data derive from interviews with male samesex couples from Germany. Following the grounded theory approach, we analyse the couples’ ‘doing (being) family’ from two perspectives. First, we discuss how family roles are negotiated within the family formation process. The fathers employ different strategies to address the issue of the ‘absent mother’. Second, we examine how the couples draw boundaries in family formation processes to ensure that they are seen as the child’s only parents. We argue that social discourses lack broader definitions of (family) relations beyond the gendered categorizations of father and mother.

Still There

This chapter argues that Woolf develops a theory of photography in her writing that describes how the world emerges within a photographic economy of light, separate from an observing subject. Photography does not reproduce the world; it develops a world through the action of light and independent of an observer. This emergent world, refusing economies of production and control, is suspended in time. The theory of photography embedded in Woolf’s writing draws on the earliest kinds of photographs—cameraless images—that formalize a conception of photography as “light-writing.” Severing the bonds between subjectivity and vision, photography adheres to a notion of objectivity that extirpates the human subject in favor of a vision of the world absent an experiencing self, a world written in terms of exposure, development, and emergence. In Woolf’s writing, the light encloses the world, stilling it, protecting it, and becoming a foil for the absent mother.

Authority in Crisis? The Dynamic of the Relationship Between Prospero and Miranda in Appropriations of The Tempest

The relationship between Prospero and Miranda is fairly typical for Shakespeare’s way of portraying parental authority and filial obligation. A strong and authoritative father, an absent mother and a (potentially) rebellious daughter are character types reused in many of his plays. In The Tempest, authority, power and ownership, be it political or domestic, are important themes. In criticism, Prospero is frequently discussed through the prism of his attitude to his “subordinates” - Ariel, Caliban and Miranda - and the play’s narrative is interpreted in the context of the theatre of power. Parental authority, a social construct, is a dynamic thing, and the Renaissance patterns discernible in Shakespeare’s plays are refashioned and changed in contemporary adaptations and appropriations of his plays. Informed by New Historicism and Cultural Materialism in relation to gender studies, this article seeks to examine the changing dynamics of the Prospero-Miranda relationship in three films - Derek Jarman’s (1979), Paul Mazursky’s (1982), and Julie Taymor’s (2010) - as well as Philip Osment’s 1988 play This Island’s Mine. Focusing on the issue of authority, power and ownership, the article aims at showing how stereotypical social and gender roles resonate with various political contexts of power.