Gone Feral:: Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity

Gone Feral: Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity is an edited collection that probes the concept of ferality as it relates to and intersects with traditional, patriarchal dictates of normative femininity. The collection, appropriately, is a creative hodge-podge of feral representations and enactments that span multiple disciplines and social and existential dimensions and utilizes textual and intertextual analysis, creative non-fiction, feminist theory, critical animal studies, literature, media analysis, poetry, and artwork to explore the complex and contradictory nature of ferality as it exists within, outside, and on the margins of patriarchal culture. Ultimately, the collection seeks to understand and showcase how the concept of ferality may be understood as an inevitable consequence of, and potential resistance to, patriarchal culture and the dictates of normative femininity that have long snared feminine potential, caged feminine spirits, and neutered feminine authenticity.

Dr. Andrea O?Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies (2006) and its subfield Maternal Theory (2007), and creator of Matricentric Feminism, a feminism for and about mothers (2016) and Matricritics, a literary theory and practice for a reading of mother-focused texts (2021). She is full professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University, founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative and publisher of Demeter Press. She is co-editor/editor of thirty plus books on many motherhood topics including: Maternal Theory, Feminist Mothering, Young Mothers, Monstrous Mothers, Maternal Regret, Normative Motherhood, Mothers and Sons, Mothers and Daughters, Maternal Texts. Her 2024 titles include Care(ful) Relationships between Mothers and the Caregivers They Hire, The Mother Wave; Theorizing, Enacting, and Representing Matricentric Feminism; and The Missing Mother. She is author of four monographs including Matricentric Feminism: Theory Activism, Practice, the 2nd Edition (2021) and In (M)otherwords; Writings on Mothering and Motherhood, 2009-2024 (2024). She has published 15 chapters on 30 post 2010 novels/memoirs that will soon be published in the monograph Matricritics as Literary Theory and Criticism: Reading the Maternal in Post-2010 Women’s Narratives. She has received more than 1.5 million dollars in funding for her research projects including her current one on Millennial Mothers. Casey O?Reilly-Conlin has a Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies and a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies. She resides in Toronto, Ontario with her partner and cat.