CFP: Between the Baby and the Bathwater: Navigating Parenthood in Academia (5/20/05; MMLA, 11/10-11/13/05)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Panel Session Title: " Between the Baby and the Bathwater: Navigating Parenthood in Academia"
Midwest Modern Language Association's annual meeting (11/10/05-11/13/05)
in Milwaukee, WI

This “special session” proposes to examine the state of our profession in terms of parenthood. In looking to this personal/professional nexus, the panel seeks narrative accounts that are situated within the popular press's current representations of parenthood in America. How do the feelings of exile, isolation, alienation, and anger that the popular media is attaching to contemporary parenthood play out within our profession? How do institutional and departmental policies and practices affect having, as well as raising, children? What negotiations must be made in terms professional goals, desires for our children, and one's own understanding of oneself as a parent, a scholar, and a teacher? Is it possible to be a feminist academic and a parent? What other factors make having and raising children so fraught?

The conflicts surrounding academic professionalism and parenthood are not only a significant issue but also a timely concern. The recent outpouring of popular press books about the state of parenthood-books such as Judith Warner's much-reviewed Perfect Madness, Cathi Hanauer's The Bitch in the House and Daniel Jones's companion The Bastard on the Couch, Susan Douglass and Meredith Michael's The Mommy Myth, Ariel Gore's The Mother Trip, and Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood-demands attention and response. “Between the Baby and the Bathwater” also aims to addresses the M/MLA's 2005 conference theme, “History, Memory, Exile,” as parenthood makes many feel alienated, isolated, and exiled from the profession. The session hopes to articulate these feelings, theorize them, and address the causes and effects that stem from both personal decisions and professional policies and practices.

Please send one-page abstracts to Gretchen Papazian at papaz1gd_at_cmich.edu by April 20, 2005.

MMLA's guidelines for abstracts can be found at <http://www.uiowa.edu/~mmla/abstractspecs.html>

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Received on Wed Apr 06 2005 - 19:31:03 EDT