2021 Abridged Conference Brochure (click here to see more)

 

Please note that this is an abridged document that will be shared publicly.

HOW CAN I HELP?

So glad you asked! A short explanation of each will be offered at the all-member mtg. on Sat.

  1. Join us on FB and Twitter(@iamafeministmom) and share news about all the great things we’re doing. You are welcome to post events, news, and CfPs.
  2. Lead a Voices, Visions, and Advocacy
  3. If a U.S. resident, sign up for postcard writing. (If you’d like to replicate this initiative elsewhere, please email Katie at kbgarner@iamas.com)
  4. Join the steering committee. We meet 2x a month and would love to have you!
  5. Lead a task force, or join the team.
  6. Be part of our reading group (meets 8x a year) or Mama Writers Unite, a writing accountability group that meets twice a week.
  7. Donate to IAMAS.

 

 

All times are listed as CST. Sched app will automatically update to your time zone. 

 

 

DAY ONE: FRIDAY, SEPT. 24, 2021

 

9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. CDT: Welcome from Executive Director, Katie B. Garner (0.1) 

Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88026249211?pwd=UjZ1L0JmVnNnREpmcTN6UXE5bjQ1Zz09

Password: IAMAS-MAMA

 

  1. Try to log on by 8:45 a.m. CDT so you can get familiar with how Sched and Zoom works.
  2. What to Expect and How to Prepare + Conference Goals
  3. What are Action Steps?
  4. What’s new with IAMAS
  5. Introduce Kirsty Nash – aKIDemic Life
  6. Introduce Cindy Harley – Academic Mamas Foundation
  7. Meet the Board and Steering Committee  (Name, Field, and where you live.)
  8. Highlights of Conference overview (Keynotes, MOMA award, All-Member Meeting Task

Forces, after hour events)

  1. Explain speed mentoring event
  2. Slack or something similar?

 

10:00 a.m.-10:55 a.m.: Meet + Greet OR Speed Mentoring 

1.1 BYOC (Bring Your Own Coffee)

Meet the other amazing mother-scholar-activsts-artists who you’ll be spending the next few days with.

1.2 Speed Mentoring (requires pre-registration)

Each mentoring pair will spend 15 min getting to know one another and ask pressing questions from experts in the field.

 

11:00 a.m.-11:50 a.m. / Intellectual Activism: On What Mothering and Solidarity in Higher Education Can Do

2.1 Join this amazing panel, led by IAMAS steering committee members Mairi McDermott and Abby Palko, as we examine how mother-scholars can be intellectual activists. Our esteemed panel includes: Erica Lawson, Ann Marie Short, Dorsia Smith Silva, and Jamie Wagman

 

12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. / Lunch +  un-keynote address CHICANA M(OTHER)WORK

Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81624700141?pwd=QzcwSERzN0I4VHBtS3c4SVp6Z0s4UT09 

Password: IAMAS-MAMA

3.1 This won’t be the typical keynote talk! Chicana M(other)work is a group of five mother-scholars who identify as Chicana-Indigena, Chicana, Chicana/Xicana/Latina, and Afro-Chicana.  We will welcome: Cecilia Caballero, Ph.D. Candidate; Yvette Martínez-Vu, Ph.D; Judith C. Pérez-Torres, Ph.D.; Michelle Téllez, Ph.D.; Christine Vega, Ph.D.

Their recent eponymous anthology and podcast have received many accolades and can be purchased here: https://bookshop.org/books/the-chicana-motherwork-anthology/9780816537990 or https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-chicana-motherwork-anthology

Find out more about Chicana M(other)work here: https://www.chicanamotherwork.com/

 

 

1:40 p.m.-2:55 p.m. SEPT. 24, 2021 

 

Panel 4: Gaining Understanding of the Role of Reflexivity through the Lens of Mama PhD Students: Intersectionality of Identity and Researcher Positionality (Roundtable)

Moderator:  Oksana Moroz

4.1. Oksana Moroz

4.2  Atia Rasul

4.3  Parawati Siti Sondari

 

Panel 5: Race and Birth Practices

Moderator:  Jacqui Getfield

5.1  Cara Cancelmo: The Harms of Willful Ignorance: Maternal Healthcare Providers’ Insight on Racial Disparities

5.2  Denise Handlarski: Radical Reclamations: Reviving Jewish Birth Practices

5.3  Jacqui Getfield: Black Mothering: Challenges, Opportunities, and Assumptions

 

  

Panel 6: Covid, Mothers, and the Academia

Moderator:  Heather Dillaway

6.1  Kristen Hicks-Roof: The Big Difference: A Comparative Analysis Between MotherScholars and FatherScholars During COVID-19

6.2  May Friedman and  Emily Satterthwaite: Same Storm, Different Boats: Exploring Inequalities among Mothers in the Time of COVID

6.3  Milena Carvalho Bezerra Freire De Oliveira-Cruz and Maria Collier de Mendonça: The Challenges of Being a Mother and an Academic Researcher during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil

 

 

 

3:05 p.m. – 4:20 p.m.  SEPT. 24, 2021 

 

Panel 7: Writing for Mass Media (Workshop)

Moderator:  Haley Swenson

 

Panel 8: Salon: Multimedia Conversation on Ubuntu

Moderator:  Zabrina Shkurti

8.1   Linn Baran will interview Eloise Morrison (Ubuntu Wellness Window) and include a prepared multimedia presentation  from Eloise’s mother, Carol. This mother-daughter narrative will highlight their communal activist work embodying South African Ubuntu feminism principles with mothers.

Panel 9: Mid-Career Mentoring for Academic Mothers (Roundtable)

* IAMAS thanks the University Life task force for organizing this talk. 

Moderator:  Nicole Willey

9.1  Nicole Willey: Moving Beyond the Associate Professor Glass Ceiling for Academic Mothers

9.2  Robin Silbergleid:  Moving Up: Promoting Mother-Scholars to Full Professor

9.3 Christa Baiada: Getting Stuck in the Service and Mothering Track as an Associate Professor: Questions toward Change

 

 

4:20 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. / Dinner Break  

 

 

 

Friday SEPT. 24, 2021,  5:15 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. CST    

 

 

10.1 Documentary Film Viewing: Belly of the Beast (5:15 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.) 

https://www.bellyofthebeastfilm.com/

 

The documentary film Belly of the Beast will be available from Sept. 22- Sept. 28. You will NOT be able to view the film before or after these dates. We have set aside time for us to watch the film independently during this time slot, but you are welcome to view at another time, which would allow you to have a longer dinner break. Kelli Dillon will be joining us at 6:35 p.m. CDT to explain more about the film and field questions you might have.

 

10.2 Q&A with Kelli Dillon, member of the film team (6:35 p.m. -7:35 p.m.)

 

 

DAY TWO: SATURDAY / SEPT 25, 2021

 

8:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. CDT, SEPT 25, 2021

 

Panel 11: Mothers Confronting Struggles with Culture, Class and Care/work

Moderator: Margarita Levine

11.1  Aya Kitamura: Who Cooks What, for Whom and How?: Racial/Ethnic/Class Politics between Mother Madams and Migrant Domestic Workers in Asian Global Households

11.2  Bishakha Mazumdar: Crippled by Culture? Understanding the Effect of Parent Culture on Underemployment of Immigrant Asian Mothers in Canada

11.3  Cara Curtis: Mothering a New Social Ethic: Religious Resources for Reorienting White and Affluent Families’ Care Practices

 

 

Panel 12:  “Yes, I Study Motherhood, and This is Why That’s Important”: Framing Motherhood Research in Academic Conversation

Moderator:  Summer Cunningham

12.1  Summer Cunningham: Framing Your Mothering Scholarship for the Academic Job Market

12.2  Michelle Hughes Miller: How to Frame Scholarship on Mothering as Worthy Inside and Outside your Department

12.3  Erika Bocknek: Applying the Value of Academic Freedom to the Strengths-Based Study of Motherhood

 

 

Panel 13: Mamas’ Mental Health

Moderator:  Andrea O’Reilly

13.1    Carolyn Peguero Spencer: The Misnomer of Self-Care: How the Push for Personal Self-Care may Conflict with the Cultural Beliefs of Marianismo for Latina Mothers Pre- and Post-Pandemic

13.2  Katherine Wardi-Zonna: Mothers and Mental Health Disparities

13.3  Andrea O’Reilly: What finally dragged her under the water and who carried the spark: The Intergenerational Trauma of Normative Motherhood in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires

 

10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.  SEPT 25, 2021 //  MOMA Award Celebration (Panel 14)

Recorded and open to the public.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89463365156?pwd=cFB3V1hBOWpweUNjckVvRDJndGtXUT09

Passcode: IAMAS-MAMA

 

14.1 AWARD WINNER AND KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Ruth Candlish and Ana Belen Amil (Central European University)

Please join our second MOMA Award Celebration. One of the most ambitious new programs IAMAS has launched last year is the MOMA award, which acknowledges the hard work that is being done on campuses around the world to help support mothers. Working Mother Magazine has the Top 100 companies to work for and Academic Moms should have their own list. We are excited to welcome a winner who will give a talk on the winning program.

 

The following people have also been recognized by the MOMA award committee for their fine work. Tomorrow, they will offer a panel addressing how to effect change on university campuses.

 

Second Place: Kris “Fire” Kovarovic, Durham University (UK)

Third Place: Meredith Smith and Julia Broussard, Tulane University (Louisiana, USA)

ChangeMaker Award: Catherine Riley, Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA)

ChangeMaker Award: Monica Casper, University of San Diego, (California, USA)

  

  

11:10 a.m. – 12:25 p.m.  SEPT 25, 2021   

 

Panel 15: “They Won’t Listen to Me, Anyway”: Analyzing the Impacts of Race and Communication on Maternal Health Care Disparities (Roundtable)

Moderator: Shira Richter

15.1  Breonna Riddick

15.2  Tianna Cobb

15.3  Rochelle Davison Mhonde

 

 

Panel 16: Continuing the Conversation: Supporting Graduate Student Moms in the Academy (Panel 1 of 2: Graduate Student Testimonios with Faculty Listeners Mairi McDermott, Ann Duncan, Jessica Leveto, Summer Cunningham)

* IAMAS thanks the University Life task task force for organizing this talk. 

Moderator: Mairi McDermott

16.1  Arwa Alshehri: Self-discovery Journey of a Single Mother through Grad School

16.2  Oksana Moroz: Critical Incidents of Mama PhD Student during Pandemic; Navigating Teaching Assistantship and Pregnancy

16.3  Marilia Martins: Orchestrating Motherhood and Mental Health during PhD through Pandemic

16.4  Atia Rasu: Mothering a Teenager in the USA: Challenges of an International Grad Student

 

 

Panel 17: Motherhood as Experience 

Moderator: Christa Baiada

17.1  Judith Lomax: Mothering Special Needs: The Mother’s Journey

17.2  Vanessa Munroe: My Blessingway Project: A Story of Birthing a Mother and (Her Child) Hope

17.3  Lauren E. Brewer: Milk Money: A(n Almost) Three-Year Self-Study of the Costs of Breastfeeding

 

 

12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.,  SEPT 25, 2021  

 

Panel 18:  First-Generation Mother of Color Professionals: An Examination of the Intersectional Experiences in Higher Education (Roundtable)

* IAMAS thanks the Women of Color Leadership Forum task force for organizing this talk. 

Moderator: Cindy Nhung Phu

18.1 Cindy Nhung Phu

18.2 Carmen Dones

18.3 Zeina Otaky Ramirez

18.4 Patricia L. Aguirre

 

Panel 19: The Academy and Motherhood

Moderator: Mairi McDermott

19.1 Lauren Nicole McClain: A Comparison of Racial Dynamics in Academic Work-Life during the Pandemic

19.2  Mairi McDermott, Sheliza Ladhani and Stephanie Tyler:  “(Re)Pulsing Institutional Machines through M(Other)ing: Towards Perfusions of Motherhood and Academia

19.3  Catherine Riley: What Title IX Compliance Looks Like and What It Should

 

Panel 20: Struggle and Resistance

Moderator: Jacqueline Getfield

20.1   Brooke Richardson: Care as a Precursor to Justice: Moving Towards ‘Humane Justice’ in Child Protection System

20.2  Lorena Snyder: A Cry for Freedom 300 Years Later

20.3  Jennifer Brant: Indigenous Mothering as Strategies of Resistance and Reclamation

 

1:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m., SEPT 25, 2021  

 

Panel 21: Organizing for Action: Building a Professional Women’s Advocacy Organization on Campus (Roundtable)

Moderator:  Zabrina Shkurti

21.1 Heather K. Olson Beal

21.2  Lauren Brewer

21.3  Sarah Sanchez

 

 

Panel 22: Continuing the Conversation: Supporting Graduate Student Moms in the Academy (Panel 2 of 2: Faculty and Student Dialogue)

* IAMAS thanks the University Life task force for organizing this talk. 

Moderator:  Summer Cunningham

22.1  Summer Cunningham

22.2  Mairi McDermott

22.3  Ann Duncan

22.4  Jessica Leveto

22.5  Arwa Alshehri

22.6  Oksana Moroz

22.7  Marilia Martins

22.8  Atia Rasu

 

Panel 23:  Mothering Outside the Lines

Moderator:  Florence Pasche Guignard

23.1   Fiona Joy Green: Expanding the Motherline beyond the Binary

23.2  Cortny Stark: Parent-Advocacy for Transgender and Gender-Expansive Youth: An Analytic Autoethnographic Exploration

23.3 May Medallada and Jennifer Potter: An Analysis of Anti-Racist Parenting in Transracial Adoption

 

All Member Meeting: 3:10 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., SEPT 25, 2021  (Panel 24)

 

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Task Force Meetings  (Panel 25)

25.1  Task Force 2021

25.2  Writing and Publishing: (Katie B Garner)

25.3  Women of Color Leadership (Cindy Phu)

25.4  International Women Forum for Members (Florence Pasche Guignard, Laura Lazzari Vosti)

25.5  University Life (Nicole Willey, Summer Cunningham)

 

   

4:30-6:30 p.m. CDT, SEPT 25, 2021  

 

26.1 Soundbath Experience with Mother-Activist  Camille “Milly” Mays 

Camille Mays, Founder and Co-Director of Peace Garden MKE, will share her knowledge of healing with sound and community activism, which she enacts by cultivating community gardens that provide permanent memorials for victims of crime. As the mother of a son killed by gun violence, Ms. Mays shares her wisdom about moving through grief, anger, and hurt. IAMAS firmly believes that mother-scholars can only continue to do the work that must be done when they take care of their own needs. Please take the time to join this important session.

 

 

6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. DINNER break

 

 

7:00 pm to 8:30 pm CDT, SEPT 25, 2021   

 

28.1 Book Launch Salon: A Conversation with the Authors/Editors at Demeter Press   Recorded and open to the public.

Moderator: Katie Garner

Link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83831684609?pwd=d0kyRGMwaHB0NklXTHMxbHdOUmc2UT09

Meeting ID: 838 3168 4609

Passcode: IAMAS-MAMA

  1. Monstrous Mothers; Troubling Tropes. Eds. Abigail Palko and Andrea O’Reilly
  2. Mothers, Mothering, and Covid-19; Dispatches from a Pandemic  Eds. Fiona Joy Green and Andrea O’Reilly
  3. Global Perspectives on Motherhood, Mothering and Masculinities, Eds. Tolu Olu Pearce and Andrea Moraes (Dr. Moraes is not slated to attend).
  4. Mothering and Welfare: Depriving, Surviving, Thriving Eds. Karine Levasseur, Stephanie Paterson, and Lorna A. Turnbull (Only Dr. Turnbull will be present at salon.)
  5. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice, The 2nd Edition AND Maternal Theory, Essential Readings, The 2nd Edition, Ed. Andrea O’Reilly

All books can be purchased at www.demeterpress.org

 

28.2 Art + Writing Retreat  

Moderator: Summer Cunningham

This is a low-stakes meeting space for you to announce your writing goals and use the time to work toward that goal with other writers. You may want to open the meeting with a quick blurb of what you’re writing and perhaps reach out to others to do a co-writing project.

 

 

DAY THREE: SUNDAY / SEPT 26, 2021

 

THE ZOOM PASSWORD TO ALL EVENTS IS IAMAS2021

 

9:30 a.m. 10:45 a.m. CDT, SEPT 26, 2021  

 

Panel 29: Geopolitics and Motherhood 

Moderator:   Heather Dillaway

29.1  Veeksha Vagmita: Cooperation or Aggression? The Clash of World Views in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

29.2  Margarita Levine: The Biopolitical Corporeality of Motherhood: Perspectives of Central and Eastern European Women Currently Residing in the US

 

 

Panel 30: Building Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion Dossiers (Workshop)

Moderator: Robin Silbergleid

30.1  Nicole Willey

30.2  Robin Silbergleid

30.3  Ann Duncan

 

 

Panel 31:  Race, Nation and Intergenerational Motherhood Traumas: Overcoming Our Mothered Pasts and Building Anti-racist Mothering Futures (Roundtable)

Moderator:  Mairi McDermott

31.1 Kirsten Isgro

31.2 Akanksha Misra

31.3 Amanda Suriel

 

 

10:45 a.m. 12:00 p.m., SEPT 26, 2021 

 

Panel 32: Impacting Change for Mother-Scholars: Special Keynote with MOMA finalists

Moderator:   Katie Garner/Nicole Willey

32.1  Julia Broussard, Tulane University (3rd place finalist)

32.2 Monica Casper, University of SanDiego (Changemaker Award)

32.3 Kris “Fire” Kovarovic, Durham University (2nd place finalist)

32.4  Catherine Riley, Wake Forest University (Changemaker Award)

 

Panel 33: Mothers on the Frontline of Wisdom Collective Practice and Methodology (Workshop)

Moderator:  Summer Cunningham

33.1  Tammy Nyden

33.2   Dionne Bensonsmith

33.3  Angela Riccio

 

 

Panel 34: Black Motherhood and Welfare 

Moderator:  Michelle Hughes Miller

Zoom link: 

34.1  Michelle Hughes Miller: Black Mothers, Child Welfare, and the Mediating Influence of the Black Community in Negating the Construction of “Bad” Mothers

34.2  Anita Ewan: The Effects of Public Housing Policy on Black Motherhood in Toronto

34.3  Liz Podnieks: She, an African Woman with Five Children’: Race, Welfare, and Maternal Community in Buchi Emecheta’s In the Ditch

 

 

12:00 p.m. – 12:50 p.m.   LUNCH and Sessions

 

35.1 Reading Group Discussion: Chicana M(other)Work   

Moderator: Mairi McDermott and Cindy Phu (or Katie B Garner)

If you intend to purchase book, please buy here:  https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-chicana-motherwork-anthology

NEEDS description here

 

36.1  Maternal Art with Andrea Liss 

Moderator:  Summer Cunningham

In this one-hour special session, Andrea Liss presents “Breath Work,” which explores the duplicitous meanings of survival, strength and joy through metaphorical breathing exercises embodied in the artwork of Black mother artists.  

 

37.1 “Messy is Normal” Art Presentation by Shira Richter, follow-up presentation by Kinneret Wallach

Matricentric multi-disciplinary artivist, group facilitator and endependent scholar Shira and Kinneret will offer a joint “Show and Tell” with sexual violence survivor, human and children’s rights researcher, and accessibility activist Kinneret Wallach. “Messy is Normal” tells the story of how typically messy houses are treated as abnormal – particularly when resided in by single, divorced, or economically challenged mothers. Kinneret Wallach continues with examples from court proceedings in Israel in which mothers are assessed by the status of their living quarters while fathers are not.

 

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., SEPT 26, 2021 

 

Panel 38: White Motherhood in a Colorful World

Moderator:  Andrea O’Reilly

38.1   Jennifer L. S. Chandler: Colliding, Colluding, and Contending with Whiteness Norms

38.2  Nell Lake: Complexities of Care in White Progressive Mothers’ Activism

38.3 Andrea O’Reilly: A Motherhood So White: Normative Motherhood as Enacted and Resisted in the Motherhood Memoir

38.4  Emily Abellon: Raising Biracial Children in a Divided World

 

 

Panel 39: From Intensive Mothering to Sacred Practices: How We Learn to Be (as) Mothers

Moderator: Florence Pasche Guignard

39.1  Florence Pasche Guignard: Maternal Encounters and Spiritual Inspirations of Frédérick Leboyer

39.2  Gertrude Lyons: Mothering Beyond Birth: Examining the Transformative Potential of Motherhood in an Evolving Society

39.3  Michaelene Fredenburg: TBD

39.4  Rosalie Bouck: “Why Are Some Mothers So Scary?”: An Exploration of Terrifying Mother Goddesses of Indigenous Mesoamerica and What They Can Teach Us about Ourselves as Mothers

39.5  Kate Morgan: Transcending Material Definitions in Mother God Depiction “Secret Society” Tradition

 

Panel 40: Raising Love in a Time of Lovelessness: Lessons of Pinay Mother-scholars Amidst the Anti-Asian Virus

Moderator:   Margarita Levine

40.1  Cheryl Matias: For Love of Strong, Brown Girls

40.2  Arlene Das-Magbual: Being and Becoming Home:

40.3  Jocyl Sacramento: Pinayist Motherscholaring in the Time of COVID-19

40.4  Patricia Halagao:  Our Children Are our Hope and Future

40.5 Allyson Tintiangco: My Ancestors Were Motherscholars

 

 

2:35 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. SEPT 26, 2021

 

41.1 Conference Closing Ceremony with Dr. Aisha Nyandoro (CEO, Springboard to Opportunities) 

  1. Plenary Address Dr. Aisha Nyandoro
  2. Review of Action Steps proposed by panels.
  3. Next Steps results
  4. Feedback on conference and suggestions for IAMAS (programming, outreach, planning, etc.)
  5. Mother Mondays start tomorrow at 12 pm EDT (see below)

 

 

Topic: Mother Mondays (for IAMAS members only)

Time: Sep 27, 2021 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Every week on Mon, until Oct 18, 2021, 4 occurrence(s)

Sep 27, 2021 12:00 PM, Oct 4, 2021 12:00 PM, Oct 11, 2021 12:00 PM, Oct 18, 2021 12:00 PM

Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/96143298695?pwd=UjdzZld1OFJ4V3pnYXZKS0FCY0VuQT09

Meeting ID: 961 4329 8695

Passcode: MomMondays

3:45 p.m. -5:00 p.m., SEPT 26, 2021 

 

42.1 BYOB – Bring Your Own Beverage   

Zoom link:  https://virginia.zoom.us/j/99166110442?pwd=eDEvZUV2c2xpZ0JIcXFRK01lMlJDUT09

Let’s catch up with old (and young) friends. Bring a beverage and come to hang out and reminisce about past conferences – you know, when we could meet in person and have a relaxing beverage in a wonderful new city instead of on our fur-covered couches.