From Tomboys to Killjoys. Affects, Temporalities and Materiality in Narratives of Non-Parenting

The monograph examines how women who choose not to become mothers have been portrayed, in a historical context, in both popular culture, literature, film and fine art. The monograph takes its point of departure in an investigation of how Western popular culture has framed the childfree figure as unimportant, unproductive, and potentially inhuman and how contemporary literature, film and fine art about childfree women use affective, temporal, and material reconfigurations to rethink and reshape the stigmatized position of the "barren" woman. The monograph also examines how these reconfigurations function as a site for processes of recognition in late modernity.