A Profile
October 12th, 2008Elrena and I had the great pleasure of sitting down to talk about motherhood, higher education, and our collaboration on Mama, PhD with Terry Dolson last spring; here’s an excerpt:
Back in the late ’80s I was enrolled in an English master’s program. I had done well so far. Since my undergraduate education had been “dead white male”-heavy, graduate school in the post-feminist era was my first chance to sign up for a woman-focused class: Contemporary Women Poets, taught by an accomplished woman poet. I had finally found my niche, I thought, and this class had the potential to pull it all together for me.
Oh — and did I mention I was pregnant? The professor sure noticed. At first I thought it was my imagination, until others in the class commented on her unvarnished disdain. Finally it was in a paper conference with her that I realized the problem. She simultaneously rejected my paper topic and put me in my place, saying, “If you are headed for grass and babies, you should stick to simpler topics.” That’s when I noticed: there weren’t any other pregnant women in that class, my other classes, or the entire program.
Was it naiveté that convinced me then that the complex path to combining motherhood and academia were mapped already? No one told me it was; no one talked about it at all. Not talking about it allows for assumptions about “how it’s always been” to go unquestioned. In a comment on a recent InsideHigherEd.com article, one male academic seriously described academia as “a gentlemanly profession.” Thank goodness that Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant’s book, Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life, begins to outline a new path. This collection of essays by women trying to navigate the “gentlemanly field” of academia may be the first step toward addressing the “ivory ceiling.” I spoke with Caroline and Elrena at a coffee shop near my campus to learn what inspired this essay collection.
You can read the rest here at Literary Mama!
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