CFP: Being a Mother Academic

From the FLP mailbox, this call for contributions to an edited volume:  

Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an edited anthology, edited by Andrea  O’Reilly and Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, to be published in 2011. The idea for the  collection emerges from recent conversations at the ARM and Brandeis symposium,  “The Maternal Wall in Academe: Academic Mothers and Strategies of Resistance and  Empowerment.”   This volume will explore academic mothers’ experiences from both  narrative and theory. While previous collections such as PhD Mama and Parenting  and Professing examined being a mother academic from narrative or”lived  experience”and others, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering  issue on Mothers in the Academe, explored mother academics’ experiences from a  theoretical perspective, this is the first collection to do so incorporating  both narrative and theory. The anthology will explore how both research and  narrative can inform contemporary understandings of academic motherhood,  particularly in regard to strategies of resistance and empowerment.

Proposals should strengthen the dialogue among academic motherhood, intellectual  ideas, and personal narrative. The anthology will explore the topic of Being a  Mother Academic from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. We welcome  submissions from scholars across disciplines.   Articles will be 15-18 pages  long, while narratives will be 8-12 pages long.

Topics can include (but are not limited to):  the maternal wall, “opting out”, mentoring and modeling, being a professor  mother, work-life balance, negotiating or resisting the maternal wall, single  mothers and academic work, graduate student mothering, being a mother on the  tenure track, being a pregnant professor, maternity leave and academic  mothering, poverty and academic mothering, juggling mothering and academic  expectations, intersections between feminism and academic mothering, being an  academic artist and mothering, race and academic mothering, academic job  searches and mothering, teaching and mothering, sexuality and academic  mothering, male organizing principles and academic mothering, the academic  schedule and mothering, fertility and academic mothering, challenging  assumptions about academic mothers, ethics and academic mothering,”having it  all”as academic mothers, adoption and academic mothering,   networking,  strategies for surviving academic mothering, class and academic mothering, race  and academic mother mentors, social reproduction and academic mothering,motherhood closet; being out as a mother, second/third shift in the home,academic culture and mothering, maternal pedagogy, myth of ideal worker/ideal  mother, intensive mothering and academe,   unboundedness of mother work and  academic work, childcare, fathering,   trailing spouses,   academic couples,  biological clock, university policies and mothering, timing and spacing of  children,   perceptions of mothers in academe, discrimination avoidance,  discrimination against mothers in academe, motherhood penalty,”price of  motherhood”, adjunct work, benefits of motherhood on teaching and research.

Abstracts due by June 01, 2009.  Final accepted submissions due June 01, 2010.

Potential contributors interested in submitting abstracts to this edited volume are invited to  submit proposals to Lynn O’Brien Hallstein at lhallst@bu.edu  and Andrea O’Reilly at aoreilly@yorku.ca

-Bridget Crawford