Looking Back to Move Forward: Unpacking Maternal Misogynoir in the Academy

• In Event: Black Motherscholarship within and Beyond the Academy: Reconceptualizing Radical Futurity

Abstract

This presentation explores how Black women’s reproductive lives and labor continue to be shaped by the lingering logics of slavery. Drawing from Black feminist theory, critical race studies, and the concept of plantation politics, this work introduces maternal misogynoir—a term that captures the layered and specific forms of violence, control, and devaluation experienced by Black mothers in the academy.
Rooted in Black feminist autoethnography, this chapter is part theoretical offering, part personal testimony. Through storytelling, memory work, and poetic reflection, I examine the lived experiences of Black motherscholars those who navigate institutions that simultaneously extract their intellectual labor while scrutinizing, punishing, or erasing their maternal identities. The inquiry begins with a historical lens, tracing how Black women’s reproduction was once literally owned and exploited under chattel slavery, and how this legacy endures through contemporary academic norms and policies that continue to police, stereotype, and dehumanize Black maternal bodies.
Rather than treating the experiences of Black motherscholars as isolated or incidental, this work argues that they are structurally embedded in higher education. The presentation identifies three key dimensions of maternal misogynoir within academic institutions: (1) institutional attempts to control or discipline reproductive choices whether through subtle discouragements, tenure clock inflexibility, or questions of "productivity"; (2) the expectation that Black mothers play the role of modern Mammies, endlessly nurturing and available to students and colleagues alike while being denied support themselves; and (3) the often invisible emotional and psychological toll of navigating these expectations in a system not built for our thriving.
Methodologically, this work centers autoethnography and embodied knowledge as legitimate forms of academic critique and meaning-making. It draws not only on personal experience, but also on broader cultural texts, institutional policies, and scholarship on Black motherhood and labor. The use of autoethnography disrupts dominant academic genres that value dispassion and objectivity over lived truth and relational accountability.
The scholarly significance of this work lies in its invitation to reimagine academic spaces through a Black feminist, justice-centered lens. It pushes back against performative efforts that fail to account for the structural and reproductive violence faced by Black women, and calls for institutional change grounded in care, recognition, and liberation. Naming maternal misogynoir gives language to the often unnamed burdens Black motherscholars carry and in doing so, makes it harder for institutions to ignore or dismiss those realities.
This work aligns with AERA’s 2026 call to examine educational equity, power, and resistance. It challenges scholars and practitioners to confront how systemic oppression persists through everyday academic practices, and how we might collectively cultivate futures that honor the full humanity and motherhood of Black women in education.

Author

• Crystasany R. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee