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?
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
ARM/Brandeis Conference on Mothers in Academia
September 24th, 2008The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) and the Brandeis Women’s Studies
Research Center are pleased to host a Day Symposium
@ Brandeis University
Boston, MA
February 27, 2009
The Maternal Wall in Academe:
Academic Mothers and Strategies of Resistance and Empowerment
Many women today, particularly those that are college educated,
middle-class and professional, may not encounter gender discrimination
until they become mothers and hit full throttle the maternal wall that
blocks and blindsides them in their attempts at advancement. With women
still doing the bulk of household management – to include domestic
labour, childcare, and the emotional and organizational work of creating
and maintaining home, family and community, most mothers are unable to
put in the extensive overtime hours that are required for advancement
and success in most professions. Mothers thus find themselves “mommy
tracked” making sixty cents for every dollar earned by full-time fathers
(Williams, 2000, 2). Indeed, today the pay gap between mothers and non
mothers under thirty-five years is now larger than the wage gap between
young men and women (Crittenden, 94). As Ann Crittenden, author of The
Price of Motherhood, writes, “once a woman has a baby, the egalitarian
office party is over”.
This day symposium will explore the various strategies used by academic
mothers as they encounter the maternal wall in academe.
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS: December 1, 2008
Please email 250 word presentation abstract and 50 word bio to
arm@yorku.ca <mailto:arm@yorku.ca>
Registration and additional information TBA…
Association for Research on Mothering (ARM)
726 Atkinson, York University, 4700 Keele Street,
Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3
(Tel) (416) 736-2100 x 60366 (Fax) 416-736-5766
email us at arm@yorku.ca
http://www.yorku.ca/arm
A room of their own for breastfeeding moms…
August 7th, 2008One of the many memorable moments in Mama, PhD is this, from Jennifer Eyre White’s essay, “Engineering Motherhood,” in which she recounts working toward a Masters in Engineering as a new mom:
“For the first six months I’d race to school for class and race home for the next feeding. Sometimes [my husband] Frank would bring Riley to school to meet me, and I’d take her into the women’s bathroom and sit with her on the floor while she slurped like a piggy at the trough. One of the nice things about being a female engineer is that the bathrooms are always empty and peaceful.”
In her essay, “I Am Not a Head on a Stick,” Libby Gruner writes about the first semester back on the job after her second child was born:
“I remember little from that fall other than the constant fear that I’d forget to lock my office door while pumping.”
This week, Metro State College in Denver made all this unnecessary:
“Metro State, in accordance with the new workplace breastfeeding legislation, has created a room for students, faculty, and staff to use for the expression of breast milk. This room is a comfortable and private space where breastfeeding mothers can use their own personal pump for breast milk expression. There is also a refrigerator in this room that can be used for milk storage.”
Congratulations to all the moms and babies at Metro State, and now we look forward to hearing about the next school establishing such a space!
Survey of PhDs in the Nonacademic Workforce
June 23rd, 2008Listen up! Paula Chambers, of WRK4US, is conducting a survey of PhDs and ABDs who have left the academy and entered the nonacademic workforce.
“The purpose of the study is to provide a credible, research-based description of what those individuals feel, do and experience while transitioning into
post-academic careers. This information will be very helpful to
graduate students who feel anxious about making that decision, and
also to those who counsel them on career choices, such as career
counselors and professors.
I am looking for people who meet the following criteria:
* are PhD or ABD in any discipline (i.e., must have at least taken
qualifying exams)
* do not also have a JD, MD or MBA degree
* currently have a post-academic career (between jobs OK)
* are not currently a graduate student, tenure-track faculty member or
academic researcher in any academic department
* are not a K-12 teacher
* do not currently spend more than 10% of their total paid working
hours teaching or doing scholarly research.
If that’s you, you meet all the criteria and are invited to participate.
The study will be conducted by means of an online survey which will
take about 20 minutes to complete, plus however much discursive
writing the respondent chooses to do. All questions are optional.
Respondents can even go away and come back later: there is no pressure
to finish the whole thing in one sitting.
I cannot offer monetary compensation, but there are benefits.
Participating offers a rare opportunity to…
* Reflect on this important career transition
* Express your thoughts, feelings and experiences to a keenly
interested audience (me and my collaborator Dana Landis)
* Contribute to scholarly knowledge about people like you
* Relieve pain for grad students who would like to know what to expect
in this type of career transition
If you meet the criteria and would like to participate, here’s the link to the survey. If you’d like to know more about it, click anyway
and you will get more information. Clicking on the link does not
commit you to participate.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6PpHNtwa06_2b8qjveb5xluA_3d_3d
If you know other PhDs and ABDs who meet the criteria, please forward
this post to them so they can join in. We want the study
population to be as big and diverse as possible. Anyone who meets the
criteria is welcome and every response will be valued.”
Calling All Academic Moms In Arizona!
November 2nd, 2007Andrea O’Reilly will be in Tuscon, Arizona Wednesday November 7- Sunday, November 11, 2007.
While there, she hopes to conduct interviews with faculty and grad students on their experience of being a mother academic as part of her her SSHRCC funded research “On Being a Mother in the Academe”.
For full description of this project please visit ARM’s website www.yorku.ca/arm. The interviews take between 60 and 90 minutes.
Please contact Andrea directly if interested with availability. aoreilly AT yorku DOT ca
Shortening the Road to the PhD
October 10th, 2007Princeton’s work on shortening the amount of time it takes to earn a PhD merited an article in the New York Times recently. Readers, what do you think of this? While I don’t think it’s useful for people to languish in graduate school, one drawback of this plan (and similar ones at other universities) is that it can produce university professors without much teaching experience. I also don’t see any reference here to one often happy delay in a graduate career: starting a family. Now, if Princeton and other universities could continue to find ways to support their graduate students in their professional (writing groups; more frequent meetings with advisers) and personal lives (health benefits; parental leaves), then I’d stand up and cheer.
Calling All Academic Mothers
October 7th, 2007CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS…
Professor Andrea O’Reilly is beginning a three-year SSHRCC funded research project on the topic “Being a Mother in the Academe.” The project will be based on interviews with 50 mothers across Canada, the United States, and Australia.
The interview will be approximately 1-2 hours in length.
If you are interested in participating in the study, please email Andrea O’Reilly at aoreilly[at]yorku.ca.
Full details of the study, including ethics protocol are available from Andrea. For more information, go to the Association of Research on Mothering website.
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