Beyond Knowing the Motherscholar: Motherscholars Engaging in Self-Defining Motherscholarship

• In Event: Roundtable Session 38

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Notwithstanding academia’s silence of motherscholars, AERA 2011 granted a motherscholars panel that began articulations of motherscholarship (research on motherscholars), motherscholars (identifying an oppressed group), and motherscholarhood (a sisterhood of activists fighting for gender equity in academia) to a standing-room-only audience. Befitting is the conference theme, because initial narrative articulations is not enough to organize a body of scholarship that has been so long “patriarchally” denied. Therefore, this panel expands on the knowledge from the first panel to explicate the dimensions of motherscholars in larger structural analysis, showcase findings from empirical research, and postulate avenues for activism in the academic workspace. This panel puts the theme to praxis, by employing the knowledge of motherscholarship to enact more gender-equity in higher education.

Sub Unit

• Division J - Postsecondary Education / Section 6: Society, Culture, and Change

Chair

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of Colorado - Denver

Papers

• Testimonios From Chicana Motherscholars: “I’m Not Gonna Ask Permission, ‘Can I Have a Baby?!’” - Rebeca Burciaga, San José State University

• Critical Motherhood Praxis: Counternarrative of a Community-Engaged Motherscholar - Arlene Sudaria Daus-Magbual, San Francisco State University

• Demystifying Myths: The Cultural Wealth of Latina Single Motherscholars - Elexia Reyes McGovern, University of California - Los Angeles; Felisha Herrera, University of California - Los Angeles

• Motherscholar: Queer, Mamá, y Latina Educada - Maria Angelica Garcia, Lewis & Clark

• Motherscholars: Creating “Homeplace” in Academia - Shabnam Koirala-Azad, University of San Francisco; Emma H. Fuentes, University of San Francisco