Reading at University Press Books
November 18th, 2008Lisa Harper, Irena Smith, Caroline Grant, and Jennifer Eyre White recently had the pleasure of reading and answering questions at University Press Books in Berkeley. We’re now planning spring events at the University of Richmond and Duke University; please contact us (editorsATmamaphd.com) if you’d like us to visit your campus!
Study on Blogging and Academic Moms
November 5th, 2008Are you a mom in academia who blogs? Make your voice heard in this survey!
“Your participation would involve the completion of an anonymous online survey. The survey contains a mixture of multiple-choice and open-response questions, and should take less than an hour to complete. The survey does not have to be completed in one session. You may stop at any time and return later to complete it.
“Our hope in conducting this study is that we will gain a better understanding of the role that blogging plays for women maintaining a career and a family in Academia. We thank you in advance for your consideration. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me by e-mail (anniebfox@gmail.com or annie.fox@uconn.edu) or at the address below.
Please click here for further information and/or to complete the survey.
Calling Arkansas and Montreal Mothers in Academe
November 4th, 2008Dear ARM Members and Friends,
Andrea O’Reilly will be in Little Rock, AK for a conference Nov 4-8 and Montreal, QC for a Fellowship Nov 11- Dec 10.
While there, she should like to do some interviews for her research on being a mother in academe.
For more information on this study, please visit www.yorku.ca/arm
If you are interested in participating, please email Andrea directly at aoreilly@yorku.ca
Call for Papers: Motherhood & Philosophy
November 1st, 2008CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
MOTHERHOOD & PHILOSOPHY:
WHAT PHILOSOPHY HAS TO SAY ABOUT MOTHERS AND
WHAT MOTHERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT PHILOSOPHY
Sheila Lintott (ed.)
Department of Philosophy
Bucknell University
Abstracts with titles are solicited for a new volume in the Wiley-Blackwell series Philosophy for Everyone, under the general series editorship of Fritz Allhoff. As with previous titles now subsumed under the series—Wine & Philosophy, Beer & Philosophy, Food & Philosophy, and Running & Philosophy—Motherhood & Philosophy will be an interdisciplinary collection meant to be accessible to an educated, but non-specialized, audience. Essays should avoid discipline-specific jargon and should inquire into issues of import to mothers and anyone interested in motherhood. The collection will explore the philosophical dimensions of motherhood, including (at least) feminist, existential, ethical, aesthetic, phenomenological, and social and political considerations of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering by compiling the insights of academics and mothers from a broad range of disciplines and from outside the academy.
If you are interested in submitting work to this project, bear in mind that your essay should incorporate serious philosophical reflection on motherhood. This need not preclude your work from being lively, engaging, and even entertaining.
Guidelines for Contributions:
Abstract of paper (approx. 250 words) submission deadline: 15 December 2008
Acceptances will be issued by 1 February 2009
Submission deadline for completed papers will be 1 June 2009
Final papers should be approximately 4000-5000 words
Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail to sheila.lintott@bucknell.edu.
Please contact Sheila Lintott at the above email address if you have any questions about the book. Other proposals for series titles are also welcome; please direct those to Fritz Allhoff at fritz.allhoff@wmich.edu.
Suggested topics:
More topics related to motherhood are worthy of philosophical reflection than can be articulated here, but the following is a long list of suggestions that may prove fertile ground for inspiration.
On Pregnancy:
Phenomenology: What is it like to be pregnant?
Identity: Who am “I” when pregnant? Am I plural or singular?
Disability Studies: Examination of the intersections of pregnancy and disability, reflections on the increase in pregnancy discrimination complaints, reflections on birth defects and disorders
Ethics: What obligations does the pregnant woman have to the unborn child she carries? How do these obligations differ after birth? What about drug and alcohol use during pregnancy? Reflections on family and medical leave policies for academic and nonacademic moms.
Body Image: Can pregnancy liberate women from the tyranny of cultural norms of prescribed thinness?
Race/Ethnicity: How is the pregnant woman’s body experienced and represented in racialized/racist ways?
Death: Reflections on loss during pregnancy, childbirth, or childhood
On Childbirth:
Birth Control: Has the medicalization of childbirth helped or harmed women?
A Face Only a Mother Could Love: Are newborn babies really beautiful?
Birth Stories: What is the narrative structure of birth stories? Why are birth stories important and yet seemingly inappropriate for public discourse?
Murphy Brown Feels Like a Natural Woman: The affect the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth on television and in film on expectations and experiences of pregnancy and birth
Pleasure and Pain: Considerations of why women have more than one child (after having experienced the excruciating pain of childbirth first-hand)
On Mothering:
What’s in a Name: What is a mother? A mom?
The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love: Should all moms love being moms?
Brooke vs. Tom: On the nature, proper treatment, and representation of postpartum depression
To Nurse or Not to Nurse: On social and cultural pressures to breastfeed, bottle-feed, or wean
Mommy Wars: Sarah Palin, Hilary Clinton, and the portrayal of moms in power
A Mother’s Love: Can we rationally evaluate our children’s strengths and weaknesses or are we necessarily biased (to exaggerate the good or even the bad)?
Gender Differences: On differences between mothering a daughter and mothering a son
Role-sharing: Can equity exist in parenting or co-parenting relationships?
Gender Roles: What are the differences between mothers and fathers?
Work/family Balance: The politics of professional moms “opting out,” practicing philosophy and being a mom, being an academic and a mom
Parenting: Feminist moms, co-parenting, and non-traditional families
My Mother, Myself: What are the existential implications of the realization that I am, after all, becoming my mother?
Mama, PhD Readings in NYC
October 26th, 2008We’re just back from two terrific, enthusiastic events at Bluestockings Bookstore and KGB Bar in New York City. We’re still scheduling bookstore and campus events, so contact us at editors AT mamaphd DOT com if you’d like us to come visit!
Here’s a picture from our Bluestockings reading with Susan O’Doherty, Elrena Evans, Caroline Grant, Nicole Cooley, and Jennifer Cognard-Black.
Call for Papers: Philosophical Inquiry into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering
October 16th, 2008Keynote Speakers: Lisa Guenther, Vanderbilt University
Eva Kittay, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Invited Speaker: Andrea O’Reilly, the Association for Research on Mothering, York University
Hosted by the University of Oregon and the Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering Research Group.
Sponsorship provided by the University of Oregon Graduate School, the Center for the Study of Women in Society, the Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon Department of Philosophy, and the Graduate Student Philosophy Club.
Call for papers
Submit abstracts for papers or panels
Approximately 750 words
Due January 31, 2009, at 5:00 p.m.
E-mail submissions or questions to
PCM_Conference@yahoo.com
Include a cover sheet with name, institution, department,
and contact information. Document should be submitted in
MS Word (.doc file).
For further details and registration information, please link to
www.uoregon.edu/~uophil/events.html
Mama, PhD Readings in Pennsylvania and San Francisco
October 13th, 2008The Mama, PhD Fall Book Tour got off to a great start on opposite coasts yesterday. In Pennsylvania, Elrena Evans and contributor Laura Levitt read to an enthusiastic audience at Barnes & Noble:
And in San Francisco, Caroline Grant read by the light of a disco ball (and Literary Mama colleague Rebecca Kaminsky’s flashlight) to a good crowd at The Beauty Bar:
We’d love to see readers at future events; check out our listings here.
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!
On Publicity
October 12th, 2008Elrena and I are learning so much about publicity now as we try to spread the word about Mama, PhD, we are guest blogging about it for Cindy Green; check it out:
So you’ve written the book. You’ve gotten an offer, you’ve signed the contract, you’ve edited yourself cross-eyed. Now all you have to do is wait for publication day.
While you’re waiting, this is the perfect time to start thinking about publicity—the bridge that will span the gap between you and your readers, the tool that will bring your book to your buyers. Here are some tips to get you started…
Click on over to Cindy Green to read the rest!
More on the Mama, PhD Symposium at UCA
October 8th, 2008In my essay for Mama, PhD, “The Bags I Carried,” I describe a couple of the outrageous things people said to me when I was a pregnant faculty member at Stanford, and how isolated I felt, despite my very supportive chair, Andrea Lunsford, and the generally friendly atmosphere of the campus. Outrageous and isolating tend to make for better narrative than the calm waters of pleasant interactions!
But one of the people who made my life at Stanford especially collegial was Mary Ruth Marotte, who taught in the writing program with me, and happened also to be pregnant (she with twins). We talked about her dissertation project on images of pregnancy and childbirth (coming soon from Demeter Press), about the ups and downs of our classes, and about our hopes to continue teaching and writing after our children were born.
We’ve taken different paths in the past 7 years, but I’m not surprised that we still have a lot to talk about, and I’m delighted with the response to the symposium Mary Ruth just led at UCA with her colleague, Paige Reynolds, and Mama, PhD contributor Aeron Haynie. A write-up in the local newspaper reports:
Professors and students at the University of Central Arkansas tackled a tough subject Monday, questioning ways women are often forced to choose between raising children and pursuing an academic route.
Focusing on the book, Mama PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, the group presented the view that it is possible though difficult to do both.
The idea for the conference came from two English professors, Mary Ruth Marotte and Paige Reynolds, two tenure-track women who also raise children of their own.
Marotte said Mama PhD took a good look at how even 21st-century women are finding it hard to focus on both the academic world and their family.
“That’s what the book does so brilliantly, to give voices to women who often feel silent,” she said.
You can read the rest of the article at the Log Cabin Democrat. Thanks to all who participated in the event!
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