The Liminality of Multinational Muslim Motherscholaring During COVID-19: A Feminist Narrative Inquiry

• In Event: The Intersections of Motherscholar Identities in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

Objective/Purpose
Women with children have long struggled in academic work environments that often undermine their efforts of “keeping up” with their childless colleagues (Leonard & Malina, 2017; Mason, Wolfinger, & Goulden, 2013). Coupled with COVID-19, current life makes visible the fragility of any supportive structures accommodating mothers in academia, which leaves these academics grappling with the impact of subsequent societal shifts on their current and future positionalities (Minello, 2020; Supiano, 2020). We, two early-career multinational and Muslim motherscholars, ask ourselves how these shifts are changing our own positionalities: the ways we mother our children, instruct our students, and conduct our research; but also how we observe Ramadan during the pandemic, maneuver ever-changing travel restrictions, and navigate xenophobic immigration orders imposed by the U.S. administration under the guise of COVID-19 responsiveness and “the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens” (Trump, 2020).
Theoretical Framework
In this feminist narrative inquiry study, we interrogate the shifts in our identities as multinational Muslim mothers with faculty positions during the COVID-19 lockdown using the concept of “liminal space” (Turner, 1967, 1969) as our theoretical foundation. Turner (1967) describes liminality as a space in between two positions, a temporal state in which social structures and hierarchies are unstable, but in which new possibilities and “novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (p. 97) as well. Hence, it is a concept that is not only useful to make meaning of the unsettled and unsettling social structures under the current pandemic, but also of the production of our tension-filled “betwixt and between” identities (Turner, 1969) as multinational Muslim motherscholars within those contexts.
Method and Data Sources
The unique situated, varied, and complex experiences (Chase, 2005) of navigating motherhood and academia is captured with personal journal entries. This method allows us to document and reflect on events; exchanges with partners, children, and family abroad; record transgressive data (St. Pierre, 1997) such as wishes, plans, dreams, and emotions; and engage intellectually with readings of newspaper articles, op-ed pieces, and scholarly work on the effects of the pandemic on academic motherhood.
Results
We use a rhizoanalytic approach (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) to interrogate the data with two analytical prompts: “How are we ‘making do with the messiness’ of the COVID-19 induced restrictions and lockdown?” and “How are we ‘finding agency within’ our daily practices as multinational Muslim motherscholars who teach?” (St. Pierre, 1997, p. 176). Part of the results are (re)presented in this panel in two complex, tension-filled vignettes (Masny, 2013): (1) Ramadan collectiveness, physical and social isolation, and reimagining spirituality, and (2) the impossible yet hopeful border bingo of passports, nationalities, departure and arrival countries to travel home.
Significance
This study extends the concept of liminality to capture, make meaning of, and (re)present the ways in which the current rupture of normalcy (Roy, 2020) affects motherscholars’ conceptualizations and renegotiations of identity. It also adds to the growing body of research on the impact of COVID-19 on the societal restructuring of multinational Muslim women’s lives.

Authors

• Katharina A.Azim, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Wesam M. Salem, University of Memphis