NWSA 2009: Call for Roundtable Participants

January 13th, 2009

Mama, PhD:
Reflections on Parenting in the (Feminist) Academy

The 2008 book, Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life, offers a diverse set of perspectives on the challenges and rewards of combining parenthood with an
academic career. This proposal seeks to continue that conversation, particularly focusing on the experience of parenting as Women’s Studies (and WS-related) faculty and graduate
students. Despite the popular perception of academia as a flexible career that easily accommodates parenthood (“You only teach 12 hours a week? And you have summers off?”), the demands of publishing, teaching, dissertation writing, attending conferences, going on the job market, and activism make navigating the work/family divide difficult.

The session will consist of a discussion among panelists, as well as audience members, about various aspects of academic parenting. Topics to be covered may include, but are not limited to:

-planning: when is the best time?

-pregnancy

-working with reproductive technologies

-affording children on grad school stipends and temporary
position pay

-issues with medical benefits

-feminist parenting

-struggles with conception

-attitudes toward parenting in departments and universities

-birthing

-parenting while on the tenure track

-parenting after tenure

-parenting during graduate school

-parenting as an undergraduate

-parenting on the job market

-parenting as a non-traditional student

-adoption

-remaining childfree

-single parenting

-issues in co-parenting

Embedded within our discussion will be an attentiveness to the
ways in which all of these issues are impacted by gender, race, class,
sexuality, age, and ability. Ideally,
participants will include an assortment of individuals who can speak to the
challenges and rewards of parenting at different levels of an academic
career.

Please send a short paragraph describing your proposed
contribution to the roundtable to brown.2997ATosuDOTedu
by February 1st. Decisions will be made by February 5th.

Adriane Brown, PhD Student,
Women’s Studies
The Ohio State University

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