New book by Sonya Huber!
February 21st, 2008
Opa Nobody by Sonya Huber has just been released by the U of Nebraska Press (American Lives Series, ed. Tobias Wolff) and is now available at Amazon.
It had come to this: breastfeeding her screaming three-month-old while sitting on the cigarette-scarred floor of a union hall, lying to her husband so she could attend yet another activist meeting, and otherwise actively self-destructing. Then Sonya Huber turned to her long-dead grandfather, the family “nobody,” for help.
Huber’s search for meaning and resonance in the life of her grandfather Heina Buschman was unusual insofar as she knew him only through dismissive family stories: He let his wife die of neglect . . . he used his infant son as a decoy when transporting anti-Nazi literature in a baby carriage . . . and so the stories went. What she actually discovered was that, like his granddaughter, Heina Buschman was a committed and beleaguered activist whose story echoed her own. Huber’s research not only conjured her grandfather’s voice in answer to many of the questions that troubled her but also found in his story a source of personal sustenance for herself. Based on extensive research and documentation, this story of Heina Buschman offers a rare look into the heart of the “average” socialist trying to survive the Nazis and rebuild a broken world. Alternating with his voice is Huber’s own, providing a rich and moving counterpoint that makes this deeply personal exploration of family, politics, and individual responsibility a story for all of us and for all time.
Kirkus Reviews writes, “[S]harp human insights on the omnipresent complications of living in Nazi Germany make this a worthwhile read… [A] unique, imaginative take on the family memoir.”
New Book by Jennifer Margulis!
January 24th, 2008 
Mama, PhD contributor Jennifer Margulis has a new book coming out this spring, cowritten with her husband, James di Properzio: The Baby Bonding Book for Dads: Building a Closer Connection With Your Baby.
“Many new dads have never even held a baby, or they have little or no experience in taking care of babies. Men feel apprehensive and unsure about how to interact with their offspring, especially when that offspring is a tiny bundle that weighs under 10 pounds! That apprehension, though, shouldn’t put men into the back seat of parenting, as that would be taking a step back from one of the most important experiences of life. Men need to take the initiative and create their own ways of bonding with their children, right from the beginning. Topics include newborn bonding, carrying, skin-to-skin contact, diapering, going places, napping, playing, exercising, and reading to baby. This instructive yet lighthearted text is delivered from a dad who has been there (di Properzio is the father of three), and is paired with the delightful photography of Christopher Briscoe, making this book a handy guide and a perfect gift for any new father who’s feeling a little nervous about the new responsibility in his life.”
The book is available for pre-order, and will be out in time to give your favorite dad for Father’s Day.
Pre-Order Now!!
December 16th, 2007Mama, PhD is now available for pre-order from Amazon and other on-line book sellers. For more information, click here for a pdf of the Rutgers University Press catalog page about the book.
Lovely Lady Lumps
December 15th, 2007Read Elrena Evans’ column, “Lovely Lady Lumps” in the “Nutshell” section of the Winter 2008 issue of Brain, Child magazine. Elrena writes about the new trend in postpartum plastic surgery, with an insight into the issue from Mama, PhD contributor Jessica Smartt Gullion.
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.
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
Mary Ann Mason at the Huffington Post
October 18th, 2007Former UC Berkeley graduate dean, Mary Ann Mason, is now an occasional blogger over at the Huffington Post; check out her report on what young women want from their president:
*A Federal initiative for pre-school and after-school childcare for all families: a fact in many European countries
*A flexible work place that allows both mothers and fathers time off to accommodate pregnancy and the critical right to re-enter a full-time track when they are ready to do so.
*Part-time work that receives equal compensation to the rate of full-time work, with full benefits for those who work at least 50 percent of the time. This may be a permanent choice to many parents.
*Family leave that is fully paid for a minimum of 16 weeks (only California comes close to this goal.)
*Social security benefits which count periods of childcare at home
Now, that’s a plan I’d vote for. Let’s see if any of the candidates will add it to their platforms.
Mama, PhD Contributor’s Poem on The Writer’s Almanac
October 12th, 2007Mama, PhD contributor Julia Lisella had a poem read on The Writer’s Almanac on public radio yesterday! If you’d like to listen to Garrison Keillor reading her poem, just visit The Writer’s Almanac and click on the “Thursday” option above the poem of the day.
Congratulations, Julia!
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.
Two New Columns
October 8th, 2007Mama, Phd editors Caroline and Elrena both have new columns up on Literary Mama today!
In Mama at the Movies ~ Shut Up and Sing, Caroline writes:
I am a mother who hates war and violence, and loves movies and music. Shut Up and Sing (Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck, 2006) gives me a lot of what I care about in a film. It’s no date-night romance, true, but this documentary, which details the impact of Natalie Maines’ anti-war remark on the Dixie Chicks’ music, their families, and our culture, has me singing its praises.
And in Me and My House ~ Cradle Christian, Elrena writes:
I don’t understand why I am sitting here, a Christian and a feminist…allowing a man in clerical garb to rebuke my young daughter. My spirituality is twined with flesh, with bodies that bleed and birth and nurse their young. That is the high calling of motherhood: a demand that we learn to negotiate the spirit world while remaining firmly rooted in our earthly humanity.
Visit Literary Mama’s column section to read more!
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