Mothers in Academia - by Mari Castaneda & Kirsten Isgro (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Featuring forthright testimonials by women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, academic staff, administrators, and professors, Mothers in Academia intimately portrays the experiences of women at various stages of motherhood while theoretically and empirically considering the conditions of working motherhood as academic life has become more laborious. As higher learning institutions have moved toward more corporate-based models of teaching, immense structural and cultural changes have transformed women's academic lives and, by extension, their families. Hoping to push reform as well as build recognition and a sense of community, this collection offers several potential solutions for integrating female scholars more wholly into academic life. Essays also reveal the often stark differences between women's encounters with the academy and the disparities among various ranks of women working in academia. Contributors--including many women of color--call attention to tokenism, scarce valuable networks, and the persistent burden to prove academic credentials. They also explore gendered parenting within the contexts of colonialism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, ageism, and heterosexism.

Review Quotes

Mothers in Academia provides much-needed first-person accounts of the impact of motherhood on those who serve and learn in the academy.-- "Teaching Theology and Religion"

Mothers in Academia is unique in that it fuses personal experience with theory, resulting in a rich narrative analysis few books are as comprehensive.-- "European Political Science"

Deftly unpacks complex issues, emotions, and professional questions.--Victoria Rosner, Columbia University

The coverage in these essays is comprehensive and impressively diverse. They prove very useful to other academic mothers (and, perhaps, fathers) who feel alone and need confirmation that the problem is not personal but cultural and structural.--Heather Hewett, State University of New York, New Paltz

About the Author

Mari Castañeda is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and the director of diversity advancement for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the coeditor of Soap Operas and Telenovelas in the Digital Age: Global Industries and New Audiences.

Kirsten Isgro is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. She has published essays in Women and Children First: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Public Policy; Fundamentalisms and the Media; Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies; and Feminist Media Studies.