Motherscholaring: A Collective Poetic Autoethnographic Inquiry

• In Event: Motherscholaring: A Collective Poetic Autoethnographic Inquiry

Abstract

Through four years of labor, in both formal and informal motherfull spaces three motherscholars have engaged in an emerging methodology, collective poetic autoethnographic inquiry (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2017), to bridge the often-conflicting realities of our personal and professional selves. This method has served as both a form and process to nurture understandings about motherscholaring.

This demonstration shares poetic forms (autoethnographic individual poetry, collective multivocal poetry) with two aims: (a) to add to emergent literature on the concept of motherscholaring and (b) to offer methodological contributions to collective autoethnographic poetic inquiry as a generative, arts-based methodology. Our demonstration clearly connects to the conference theme which thoughtfully engages “epistemological tensions, the artificial boundaries of perceived research objectivity, and the politics of leveraging of research for equity and justice.”

Authors

• Kindel Turner Nash, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Joy Howard, University of Southern Indiana

• Candace Marie Thompson, University of North Carolina - Wilmington