26.067 - Reproductive Labor: Work, Gender, and Contemporary Schooling

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In recognition of the substantial amount of work that is carried out in the privatized and feminized sphere of family/home, work unpaid but essential to the economy’s long-term functioning, feminist theorists coined the term “reproductive labor.” This symposium uses the notion of reproductive labor to explore how the feminization of subject positions (teacher, librarian, activist, and worker for/with digital technologies) and of related educational discourses affects how work essential to the maintenance of our political economy (in schools, policy-making, technology) gets carried out, recognized, and supported.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Philosophical Studies in Education

Chair

• Amy B. Shuffelton, Loyola University Chicago

Papers

• Women and Moral Madness: When Increased Responsibility and Diminished Authority Meet - Doris A. Santoro, Bowdoin College

• Invisible Subjects: Reproductive Labor in the Affective Economy of the School Library - Jessica Hochman, Pratt Institute

• Motherboard: Documenting Discourses of Reproductive Labor, Gender, and Identity in Digital Fields - Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, Texas Tech University

• Parental Activism and the Maintenance of the Public: Countering Neoliberal Privatization With Reproductive Labor - Amy B. Shuffelton, Loyola University Chicago