Review on Author Magazine
July 27th, 2008Check out the review by Kevin Lauderdale in the new edition of Author, which highlights the essay by Jamie Warner:
Contributor Jamie Warner and her husband endlessly debate whether or not to have children. In what is the book’s most crucial and telling line, she writes that their indecision comes from “the same skills that got us our degrees and jobs in the first place: fertile imaginations, a compulsive need to make lists, the ability to see problems from a variety of perspectives, and worst of all, the need to question societal norms.”
Click here to read more.
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.”
A Review!
June 15th, 2008Mama, PhD is getting out into the world now, making its way to readers and reviewers. Today, we spotted this review on Activistas, by the wonderful Bob Drago (whom we considered wonderful, for the work he does on academics and family life, even before he wrote this review). Here’s an excerpt:
This is easily the most important piece of work to date on academics and family issues, full-stop, because the editors draw out from the authors all of the messiness, the highs and lows, the fears and hopes, the pride, guilt, anger, love and sense of failure and accomplishment and mainly great stories that comprise life for so many moms who try to make it as academics. The panopoly of supportive or unkind department chairs and colleagues, high and low status schools, childcare arrangements that work or don’t work, supportive or non-existent partners, and perfect and not-so-perfect children is all here.
You can click on over to Activistas to read the rest!
Mama, PhD: The T-Shirt! and the hat! and the bag!
June 13th, 2008
Get your Mama, PhD shwag here at Cafe Press and let the world know you’ve got it going on , body and brain.
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.
Now Shipping!
May 31st, 2008We’re delighted to announce that Mama, PhD is in stock and shipping now, so if you pre-ordered, look for your copy soon!
Mama, PhD blog on Inside Higher Ed!
May 4th, 2008We are thrilled to announce that InsideHigherEd is launching a new Mama PhD blog, and seven of our contributors — Libby Gruner, Megan Kajitani, Susan Bassow, Dana Campbell, Liz Stockwell, Anjalee Nadkarni and Della Fenster — will be blogging regularly there. This is a tremendous opportunity to bring the discussion of academic work/ family life balance issues out of the book, into the blogosphere and from there into classrooms and campus administrative offices.
Please check out the blog, leave your comments, and send questions to Megan (for now, via info@insidehighered.com; the blog will soon list a more direct address) who will be writing a weekly advice column. And then please spread the word! Tell your friends, add the link to your blogroll, and help us build an audience for our bloggers.
New book by Cynthia Kuhn!
April 17th, 2008
Contributor Cynthia Kuhn’s new book, Styling Texts: Dress and Fashion in Literature, cowritten with Cindy Carlson, is out now from Cambria Press:
“Covering a variety of genres and periods from medieval epic to contemporary speculative fiction, Styling Texts explores the fascinating ways in which dress performs in literature. Numerous authors have made powerful—even radical—use of clothing and its implications, and the essays collected here demonstrate how scholarly attention to literary fashioning can contribute to a deeper understanding of texts, their contexts, and their innovations. These generative and engaging discussions focus on issues such as fashion and anti-fashion; clothing reform; transvestism; sartorial economics; style and the gaze; transgressive modes; and class, gender, or race “passing.”
“This is the first academic volume to address such an extensive range of texts, inviting consideration of how fashionable desires and concerns not only articulate the aesthetics, subjectivities, and controversies of a given culture, but also communicate across temporal and spatial divisions. Styling Texts is an essential resource for anyone interested in the artistic representations and significations of dress.”
Mama, PhD in the Berkeley Grad Student Newsletter
April 11th, 2008Check out our nice write-up in the recent edition of eGrad, a newsletter for Berkeley graduate students.
Teaching and Tae Kwon Do
March 31st, 2008Contributor Libby Gruner has an essay in Inside Higher Ed; here’s a blurb:
At first I didn’t mention it at work. I think I felt a little silly about it: a middle-aged woman — an English professor! — taking tae kwon do. But then one day a colleague asked about a small bruise on my arm and, unthinking, I told him I’d blocked a kick with my forearm. It hadn’t been a smart move in tae kwon do, but as I told him about it, I could see the respect in his eyes. I began to think I should bring in my broken boards, leave them in the office, maybe mention how easily my palm had just gone through the wood. It couldn’t hurt.
Read the rest at Inside Higher Ed!
Join us on Facebook