New book from Laura Levitt!
December 7th, 2007Temple University professor Laura Levitt’s new book, American Jewish Loss After the Holocaust (New York University Press) is out now; Laura’s Mama, PhD essay, “On Being Phyllis’s Daughter: Thoughts on Academic Intimacy,” is based on a chapter from the book. Here’s a small taste:
On the one hand, my mother adhered to the norms of mothering that defined her early 1960’s generation. Although she was educated and worked as a teacher before she had children, she left her job when my brother and I were very young, and did not go back to teaching for almost five years.
But on the other hand—this is not exactly where I wanted to begin. I wanted to start by saying that my mother, like me, played with dolls. Her favorites, so she tells me, were paper dolls. She spent long days as a little girl cutting out various outfits, experimenting with how they looked. I think about my mother playing with paper dolls when I think about her accounts of what she did during her long days at home with me as a young child. For my mother, staying at home was not easy. She loved teaching, and regretted giving up her job when I was born.
I have few memories of my mother at home with my brother and me. I have memories of playing with friends and a spattering of memories of other adults, but I do not have any clear memories of my mother. What my mother tells me is that she spent a lot of her time cleaning and ironing my various outfits and dressing me up in them. I cannot help but imagine that, in part, my role was quite similar to that of her paper dolls. She did the labor in order to get my clothes ready for me to wear, and then spent her days putting them on and taking them off me. What I recall are itchy crinolines and a longing to take them off, and short lacy socks that needed to be pulled up over my heels again and again. I think I sensed, even then, that my mother was not particularly happy staying home.
Not surprisingly, it was when my mother returned to work that my most vivid memories of her began. My mother’s passion for her work was contagious. I imbibed it. I fell in love with her students and her colleagues, their stories, their intrigues, and always my mother at the center of all of this story telling. Over the years, my specialized knowledge of my mother and her life at school has enabled a kind of intimacy between us. It allows me to share a part of her life, as we communicate through the mediation of other people and their stories. Not unlike a beloved text, these stories have enabled my mother and me to connect in ways that seemed to foreshadow the kinds of academic intimacy I now share with many of my own students. My mother and I have always communicated most profoundly in this way, and this is very much the kind of intimacy I know best in my own life.
New Column
September 14th, 2007Mama, PhD co-editor Elrena Evans debuts her Literary Mama column this week, Me and My House, which offers a look at her experiences mothering — as a Christian, as a feminist, as someone who can never seem to find the perfect pair of jeans. Look for “Me and My House” every month at Literary Mama.
New Fiction by Elrena Evans
August 13th, 2007Mama, PhD co-editor Elrena Evans’ story, “The Journey Home,” has been published by Literary Mama. Here’s an excerpt:
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It was day two of the journey home, and I missed Miriam. On the way to Yerushalayim for the Feast of the Passover our families had walked together, her friendship a welcome comfort on the dry, dusty road. But Yosef, her husband, had been eager to get back home to Nazerat, and my little ones were moving more slowly each day. “Go on ahead,†I’d finally told Miriam, midmorning on the first day after the Feast. “I’ll bring Yeshua back when we get to Nazarat. Or whenever I run out of food.â€
Miriam had laughed. Her eldest son, Yeshua, was my eldest son David’s constant companion. The boys were inseparable, so much so that when I looked at my family I either saw three children, or five. If Yeshua wasn’t around, neither was David.
One, two, three, four, five, I counted in silent rhythm as we walked, one, two, three, four, five. Five children. All present, all accounted for.
I paused for a moment on the dusty trail. Thoughts of Miriam slipped from my mind as I realized my feet were tired, my arms sore, and my overnursed breasts like smoldering coals beneath my dusty robe. One, two, three, four, five, I counted again. One, two, three, four, five.
I arched my back, shifted my daughter’s weight from one hip to the other. But as I moved her she awoke, instantly hungry, and began frantically searching for my breast. I sighed and called to my husband.
“Ba’al, we need to stop. Zahara needs to feed again.â€
He looked at me. “Why can’t you just feed her as we walk?â€
I closed my eyes and counted four breaths before I answered. It was useless getting angry with him, he’d never nursed a baby. He couldn’t understand. Once again, I missed Miriam.
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Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest!
New Book on Combining Work & Family
June 3rd, 2007Mary Ann Mason, until recently the graduate dean at U.C. Berkeley, and her daughter, Eve Mason Ekman, a social worker, have published a new book titled Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers (Oxford University Press).
Mason made news several years ago with her studies on women in the academy titled “Do Babies Matter?” This project expands on that, looking at the impact of family life on women’s careers in medicine, law, business, and higher education and, most importantly, offering suggestions to make combining work and family easier.
I’m looking forward to checking it out…
In Media Res
November 6th, 2006Sonya Huber submitted this piece for Mama, Ph.D., and I poached it for Literary Mama. Here’s just a taste:
I lose myself in my work, then I worry that I’ve been cheating: have I somehow made myself un-pregnant, broken the shallow membrane between my hopes and the multiple worlds in my head? If I stop thinking about the baby, does it die? If I leave my body for lines of text, who reminds the baby’s cells to divide, and who keeps it from getting lonely?
It’s week sixteen. Happy sweet sixteen, goat-baby. I promise I’ll stop calling you goat when we find out next month what you are. Goat-baby, I love you so much, but I’m glad you’re not here yet. Rather than counting down the weeks, I am banking against them, hoping for the full forty.
In the coffee shop, I met with an accomplished writer who’s also the mother of an eight-year-old. “Look, you can do it,” she said as she glanced down at her watch, timing the minutes until she had to go pick up her daughter. “Just make sure you have a draft of the book done before the baby comes. You think you’ll have time afterward, people always say, ‘Oh, I’ll write when the baby sleeps,’ but that’s bullshit. You’re going to be sleeping or staring at the baby. So get to work and have the most productive summer of your life.”
When friends ask me how I’m doing, I am honest only if I know them well. I say, “I’m panicked. I haven’t ever had this kind of a deadline before.” To one friend who is also a writer thinking about getting pregnant this year, I say, “You know, it feels like somehow December 2 is the date I’m going to die.” Then the disclaimers: “I mean, I know that’s sick, and of course, I don’t really think that…”
She nods. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s like, goodbye to everything.”
Click here to read more about life “In Media Res.”
Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory
November 1st, 2006In the interest of reading more stories about how women attempt to combine family and work life, I’m posting this call for papers. Please respond to Emily Monosson at the email address below for more information.
I am editing a book about women, science and family, tentatively
titled Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory. I think the time is right for women to speak out about their different experiences, opportunities and personal choices as mothers and as scientists.
I am currently collecting essays. If you are interested in contributing and would like more information please respond to:
emonosson@verizon.net.
Do Babies Matter?
September 15th, 2006Of course they do.
Your humble editors have three between us (a fourth due in a couple of weeks) and those children have made a significant impact on our academic careers. Elrena has already written a bit about this in her essay for Literary Mama, “Birthing: A Process in Vignettes (you can also find her piece in the wonderful new anthology, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers) and of course she’ll have more to say in Mama, Ph.D. Meanwhile, Caroline landed a great job and discovered she was pregnant all in the same week, taught just long enough to earn 6 weeks maternity leave, and — 2 kids and 4+ years later — hasn’t been back. How she navigated her career crossroads will be described more fully in the book.
Babies mattered to us when we left the academy, and they matter to us even more now as we think about whether and when to return. That’s partly why we decided to organize this collection of essays. Now as we read the submissions that are pouring in, we’re learning dozens of other ways that babies have mattered in the career decisions of the amazing writers whose stories we’re gathering.
But if you have a head for numbers and really want to know exactly how much babies matter, please read the work of Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden, whose essays “Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on the Life Long Careers of Academic Men and Women” and “Do Babies Matter: Closing the Baby Gap” offer the kinds of jaw-dropping statistics that make university administrators sit up and take notice.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Mary Ann Mason yesterday to discuss her research and the possibility of her contributing to Mama, Ph.D. Her writing is smart, clear, and — most importantly — it’s making a difference. Work like hers is helping to make higher education a more family-friendly environment. We expect the essays in Mama, Ph.D. will contribute to this important effort.
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