One Mamá’s Dispensable Myths and Indispensable Machines
August 31st, 2009In her essay, Angelica Duran writes about the machines that get her, a single mother of two, through her graduate program: the computer on which she wrote; the bicycle which carried her, her books, and sometimes her kids from home to school and back again; the movable library shelves, where her young son quickly learned his letters and numbers, so eager was he to key in the combination that would set the shelves in motion. We’ll never forget the image of her daughter writing encouraging notes – “’Good job, mom!’ or ‘Just 8 more days until you turn in your dissertation’ – and paper-airplaning those ‘love notes’ down the staircase to [her mom].”
Angelica now writes, “Since the book came out, young Jacqueline and Paul have made major steps. Jacqueline is now a freshman at Purdue, majoring in English Education, minoring in Spanish, playing tuba in the (fantastic) Purdue All-American Marching Band, and living in the dorms. Paul is a high school freshman, whose growth spurt leaves me the shortest member of our nuclear family. He takes after his stepfather and me in loving international travel: just last year he traveled with some junior high folk to Italy over spring break for a week, and with his best friend’s family to South Korea for about a month. An Associate Professor, I accepted the nomination to become the Director of Religious Studies. In November, I will be talking about being a Mama, Ph.D. during recent years at the annual National Women’s Studies Conference in Georgia. Husband Sean is busily remodeling our new home — we (environmentally-responsibly) downsized upon Jacqueline’s graduation. It’s actually an older home on our same block. We love our neighbors. We are loving life.”
It’s good to hear things are going so well for this Mamá, PhD!
Coming to Terms at Full Term
August 24th, 2009In September, 2006, Natalie Kertes Weaver submitted her essay, Coming to Terms at Full Term, to be considered for inclusion in Mama, PhD. The essay begins:
On my way back to my office, I ran into a colleague, accompanied by her son, a handsome, six-foot tall, high school senior. She smiled at me and said, “Mine was the size of yours just a blink ago.” “A blink?” I inquired. “One blink,” she nodded. I grinned in return, but the encounter left me unsettled. I wondered how I will feel a few blinks from now, when I am driving my now seventeen-month old boy to his own college visits in preparation for his exodus into adulthood. Will I regret the choice I made to work when he was young? Will I be jealous of the time he spent with others while I was writing or grading or lecturing? Will he understand my reasons? Will I? These are the questions I battle nearly every day, as I remind my husband that he and the baby are my life, and ask him to please take extra care in the car. These are the questions I write about in the journal I keep for my son alongside the record of his first steps, words, and other milestones. These are the questions I struggle with at 4:00 am, when I wake from sleep, restless with thoughts of my own human frailty and mortality.
The essay is one of the shortest in the book, but gets to the heart of the struggles of working mothers in a gentle tone that builds to a conclusion of quiet determination.
We checked in recently with Natalie and learned that she’s been very busy since the book’s publication!
“Most important among the changes in my life is the arrival of our second son, Nathan Augustine, who is now six months old. I also earned tenure and was promoted to associate professor in March 2009. I have, furthermore, finished two books. The first is Marriage and Family: A Christian Theological Foundation (Saint Mary’s Press), which will be available in Sept. 09. The second is an illustrated children’s book, Baby’s First Latin (BookSurge), which will also be available in Sept. 2009. As always, I am thankful for the fullness of my busy life, and I count it all as blessings.”
Congratulations to Natalie, and here’s hoping she can take a well-deserved breather soon.
Caution: Women at Work
December 10th, 2008
Plan to attend St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s Tenth Annual Women Studies Colloquium, which will include a reading by Mama, PhD contributors Jennifer Cognard-Black, Della Fenster, and Elisabeth Gruner (Tuesday, March 24, 8:00 P. M.). For more information, visit their website.
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!
Mama, PhD conference in Arkansas!
September 27th, 2008Dr. Mary Ruth Marotte, Assistant Professor of English, and Dr. Paige Reynolds, Assistant Professor of English, will be hosting a conference on October 6, 2008 at the University of Central Arkansas (Conway) in which they will facilitate a dialogue about issues of gender, motherhood, and academia. Featured speaker will be Dr. Aeron Haynie, Professor at University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, whose essay “Motherhood After Tenure: Confessions of a Late Bloomer” appears in the Mama, PhD. YOU NEED NOT BE A “MAMA” OR A “PHD” TO ATTEND.
Monday October 6
1:00 Lunch, Mike’s Place
2:30 Book discussion and Q&A with Dr. Haynie, the Forum (Room 302) of McAlister Hall
5:00 Dinner, Michelangelo’s
7:00 Reading and Q&A with Dr. Haynie, the Forum (Room 302) of McAlister Hall
Copies of Mama, PhD available for purchase on Amazon. Please e-mail Dr. Mary Ruth Marotte (mrmarotte@uca.edu) if you plan to attend lunch or dinner.
Question, Question, Who’s Got a Question?
August 5th, 2008Tedra Osell, aka Bitch PhD, is now fielding questions about combining family and academic life over at the Mama, PhD blog on InsideHigherEd. Click on over and send her your questions; she’s got answers!
Mama, PhD on The Debutante Ball
July 28th, 2008Months ago, the lovely and talented Gail Konop Baker, a former Literary Mama columnist, invited Elrena and me to guest blog at The Debutante Ball, a group blog for writers publishing their first book. It was a fun post to write — and I hope a fun post to read! Here’s an excerpt from “3,000 Miles, Two Writers, One Book:”
Meet over email. Of course; you live, after all, 3,000 miles apart, but it helps our relationship get into writing right away. We are literally words on a page (screen) to each other for the first year of our collaboration (we don’t even talk on the phone!) It doesn’t hurt that we meet via Elrena’s submission to the section of Literary Mama that Caroline is editing at the time.
Meet when one of you is pregnant. This helps get the conversation personal, pronto, as Caroline cautions Elrena that she might not get back to her very promptly with edits.
Don’t always stick to the point. We know we are both writers, and mothers, and if we’d stayed on topic it might have stayed at that. Instead, we digress into breastfeeding and parenting and graduate school and ivory tower life — and friendship. And then, ultimately, a book.
Click on over to The Debutante Ball to read the rest!
The Boston Globe on Work/Family Issues
June 3rd, 2008First, check out Mama, PhD contributor Rebecca Steinitz’s article titled “The Rest of Us:”
Summer vacation looms large among the specters that haunt the 2 a.m. anxiety fests of the working mother. While corporate titans turn to their nannies, and stay-at-home moms schedule swimming-lesson car pools, the rest of us lie awake, trying to figure it out.
Then, read Kristen Green’s terrific article, The write time, which focuses specifically on issues facing women working toward their doctorates who want to have children, too:
Terra Barnes is a 29-year-old neuroscientist working toward her doctorate at the Graybiel Laboratory at MIT, one of the most prestigious in the country. She’s also a smitten mother of 9-month-old Brayden.
Changing diapers and performing brain surgeries don’t exactly go together, but Barnes felt she didn’t have a choice. She wanted to have a baby, and she needed to finish her dissertation.
She’s still figuring out how to make it work. . . .
And of course, for more stories about how women in academia are figuring out how to make it all work, check out Mama, PhD.
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