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.
Happy Birthday, Mama, PhD!
August 24th, 2009To celebrate our first year in print and our third printing, we’ll be visiting with our contributors and publishing brief reports from them about life since the book came out. Check back regularly for updates!
NeMLA: Calls for Papers:
July 31st, 2009The Northeast Modern Language Association
41st Anniversary Convention, Montreal, Quebec – Hilton Bonaventure, April 7-11, 2010
The 41st Annual Convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.
Abstract Deadline: September 30, 2009
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)
Being and Thinking as an Academic Mother: Theory and Narrative
While previous books and panels have examined being a mother academic from narrative or “lived experience” and others explored mother academics’ experiences from a theoretical perspective, this panel will incorporate both narrative and theory. The panel will explore how both research and narrative can inform contemporary understandings of academic motherhood and will strengthen the dialogue among academic motherhood, intellectual ideas, and narrative. Please submit 200-300 word abstracts to D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein at lhallst@bu.edu.
Literary Motherhood in the New World
This panel seeks submissions of 200-400 words which focus on the relationship between a mother and her children and/or the social role of the mother in the New World in both racialized and non-racialized contexts. Submissions from literary works which draw from the New World-North and South American mainland as well as the Caribbean-are welcomed as are works which draw from both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Please send submissions to Kate Caccavaio at caccavai@msu.edu.
The Adoption Memoir
As the forming of families through trans-national adoption has radically increased over the past decade, a new genre of memoir writing has emerged. This panel will examine the Adoption Memoir as a cultural expression of the need to interrogate this new form of family making, and its impact on the family members and society. Papers can be on single or selections of memoirs, from all viewpoints (adoptive parent, adoptee and birthparents). Literary, socio-political, psychoanalytic, feminist and global-economic approaches welcome. Lindsay Davies at lindsay.davies@nyu.edu
Big degree, big family?
July 14th, 2009Robin Wilson’s recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education asks, Is Having More Than 2 Children an Unspoken Taboo? She interviews Mama, PhD contributors Libby Gruner, Nicole Cooley, Leslie Leyland Fields (mother of six), and others for their opinions and advice about raising a big family along with a career in academe:
“‘Every day I wait for something to fall on my head,’ says Jill Nelson Granger, a professor of chemistry and associate dean of academic affairs at Sweet Briar College, who has four children. ‘I study my calendar the night before like every day is a test.’”
Is it harder to raise a large family within the context of a career in higher education than anywhere else in the US? What do you think?
Call for Papers: PERINATAL A Symposium on Birth Practices and Reproductive Rights
June 23rd, 2009CALL FOR PAPERS
Submission Deadline: July 13, 2009
PERINATAL
A Symposium on Birth Practices and Reproductive Rights
Wednesday 7th October 2009 (tentative) at
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
Forty years ago, the feminist movement advocated for reproductive rights. Over the years,
childbirth was dropped from the agenda. Why? What has this meant for women? How are
women organizing for change?
We welcome submissions from scholars, students, activists, artists, mothers and others who work
or research in this area. Comparative and interdisciplinary work is encouraged. Feminist
inquiries are explicitly sought, although all submissions will be considered. We encourage a
variety of types of submissions including academic papers from all disciplines, workshops,
creative submissions, performances, storytelling, visual arts, and other alternative formats.
This symposium is interdisciplinary. Possible topics include:
• Cultural myths and expectations around birth (written, verbal, or visual culture)
• Rethinking maternal-fetal conflict
• The psychological impact of contemporary birth practices
• Developments in midwifery, homebirth, and unassisted birth
• The symbolic significance of birth practices as socialization
• The evolution of contemporary birth practices and taboos
• Maternal resistance to birth practices
• The feminist movement and birth
If you are interested in being a presenter, please send a 250-500 word abstract and a 50 word bio
by July 13, 2009 to: Jessica Clements (jmooreqATgmu.edu). Late abstracts will be considered
and accepted if possible.
Please send the abstract as an attachment, not in the body of an email, in either PDF or Word
DOC format. Include Title, Abstract (250-500 words), Name, Institutional Affiliation, Address,
Phone, Email Address, Brief Bio (50 words).
DadsDudesDoingIt: A Father’s Day Conversation
June 16th, 2009Girl w/Pen and her cohorts ask, “When are men giong to care about work/family balance? And what is the role of men in the feminist movement anyway?” Join panelists Deborah Siegel, Courtney Martin, Gloria Feldt, and Kristal Brent Zook in a Father’s Day conversation at the Brooklyn Museum, this Saturday, June 20 at 2 PM.
For a taste of their work, you can check out this YouTube video from one of their past events:
Mama, PhD at UC Riverside
May 19th, 2009A nice piece today in the Press-Enterprise about the women who organized our event at UC Riverside:
In 2006, Cassandra Vasquez, a UC Riverside graduate student researcher, was shocked she didn’t qualify for maternity leave and surprised how little information there was on campus for soon-to-be mothers.
When seeking advice, a university official told her to take academic leave — a move that would have cut her off from everything from her student housing to library privileges. Instead, she spent hours researching options.
She worked out a solution, thanks in part to an understanding adviser. It has allowed her to, first, care for her daughter, and second, continue studying wasps as an alternative to pesticides. She expects to graduate in a year.
Hoping future graduate students won’t go through a similar situation, Vasquez and fellow graduate student/mom Genet Tulgetske have organized a panel discussion Wednesday about parenthood and academia.
Click here to read the rest! And contact us at editors AT mamaphd.com if you’d like us to come to your campus!
Mama, PhD coming to UC Riverside
May 12th, 2009I’m looking forward to speaking at UC Riverside next week with contributors Dana Campbell and Aeron Haynie; the local paper has written this article about the upcoming event:
“[The organizers] wrote letters to Chancellor Timothy White, Dean of Graduate Division Joseph Childers, the Graduate Student Council and the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate in an attempt to shed light on issues that student-parents face.
They have come up with numerous ideas and policies, ranging from a children’s section of the library, to various parental support systems and priority teaching assistant assignments.”
Click here to read the rest, and if you’re nearby, come see us at Riverside on the 20th!
Happy Mother’s Day from Moms Rising!
May 6th, 2009
In appreciation for the hard work of mothers everywhere, MomsRising has made it possible for every mom to get a personalized Mother of the Year award — announced online in a faux news cast. Check it out! Send it to your favorite mothers so that they can be congratulated by President Obama, celebrated by Hollywood stars, praised by a remarkably articulate baby, and more. Make sure to check out the crawl under the newscast; they snuck in a nice little bit of educational content.
Mama, PhD on the radio!
May 4th, 2009Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Binnie Klein for her radio show on WPKN (Bridgeport); for those of you who weren’t able to listen live, click here to listen to the archive of the show online.
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