BOOKCLUB // Motherhood Between Theory & Fiction
Our event was once hybrid. We now offer in-person and online separately. This ticket option is for in-person participation at The Madre Project in Worthing.
The in-person venue is currently located on the second floor and unfortunately does not have lift access. We recognise this creates a significant accessibility barrier for some participants and we want to be transparent about this limitation. Because accessibility matters deeply to The Madre Project
No. Attendees do not need to have purchased or fully read the texts in order to participate. Contextual summaries, key themes, excerpts, and guiding questions will be provided to help participants engage meaningfully regardless of reading capacity or access to materials.
Each month we pair: one fiction text with one non-fiction/theoretical text The aim is to explore how literature and critical theory speak to one another — allowing participants to think through complex ideas emotionally, politically, philosophically, and collectively.
Anyone interested in critically engaging with motherhood, care, reproduction, identity, labour, technology, kinship, feminism, philosophy, politics, literature, & culture. You do not need to identify as a mother or parent to attend. The space is intentionally inclusive.
Sessions are led and facilitated by Sandy Oldaker (@themotherresearcher), a philosophy researcher and artist working across motherhood studies, biopolitics, feminist theory, reproductive politics, and autoethnographic practice.
kinship and family structures, queer and trans reproductivity, capitalism and domestic labour, maternal affect and embodiment, medicalisation and biopolitics, futurity and speculative motherhood.
No. We require all attendees to book via Eventbrite so we can ensure we have prepared adequately for you. Because the group operates in hybrid form and discussion is facilitated in an intentional and supportive way, spaces are limited.
BOOKCLUB // motherhood between theory & fiction
The Madre Project hosts a new monthly critical reading group exploring motherhood, reproduction, care, labour and identity through dual reading.
Each session pairs fiction with critical theory, philosophy, memoir, or cultural criticism — creating space to think collectively about the maternal beyond sentimentality and stereotype.
Led and facilitated by @themotherresearcher; Sandy is founder of The Madre Project & a lecturer in philosophy at The University of Chichester, where she is researching a PhD on the biopolitics of motherhood.
In our fifth session, we’ll read Daidy Johnson's Long Wave alongside Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born (particularly chapter 9). In this bookclub we will particularly look at the role of maternal lineage and matrophobia - or the fear of becoming her!
Our book club started out as a hybrid event. Due to demand, this has now changed, but our philosophy hasn't! Breaking down barriers to gathering is at the heart of The Madre Project mission, so we therefore now run an in-person bookclub on the first Tuesday of the month, and an online book club the following day (first Wednesday). One benefit of this arrangement is that if your circumstances change and you have previously purched an in-person ticket, you are welcome to join us the following evening online!
For more information or to read about previous events, find us on Instagram @themadreproject