Laboring Positions

Sekile Nzinga-Johnson

ISBN 10: 1927335027 / ISBN 13: 9781927335024

Published by Demeter Press, CA, 2013

About this Item

Laboring Positions aims to disrupt the dominant discourse on academic women's mothering experiences. Black women's maternity is assumed, and yet is also silenced within the disembodied, patriarchal, racist, antifamily, and increasingly neoliberal work environment of academia. This volume acknowledges the salience of the institutional challenges facing contemporary caregiving academics; yet it is centrally concerned with expanding the academic mothering conversation by speaking against the private/public spheres approach. Laboring Positionsdoes so by privileging the hybridity between Black women's mothering experiences and their working lives within and beyond the academy. The collection also intentionally blurs essentialist boundaries of mother and "other", which dictates and generates alternate border zones of knowledge production concerning Black academic women's working lives. In doing so, the diverse perspectives captured herein offer us cogent starting points from which to interrogate the interlocking cultural, political, and economic hierarchies of the academy. The editorial goal of Laboring Positions is to offer a polyvocal collection embodying themes that privilege and arouse Black mothering as central in the narratives, research, and models of existence and resistance for Black women's survival within the academy. The contributors utilize a wide variety of methods and perspectives including Black feminist theory, intersectional feminism, Womanist research ethics, hip-hop feminism, African-centered epistemologies, literary analysis, autoethnography, policy analysis, memoir, qualitative research, survival strategies and frameworks, and situated testimony that are all collectively bound by Black women's intellectual lives, activist impulses, and experiences of mothering or being mothered. The critical embodied perspectives herein serve as evidence that Black women exist beyond the institutional and ideological boundaries that have attempted to define their journeys. Laboring Positions'; chapters speak to each other and some conversations are louder than others; yet together they offer us a complexly nuanced portrait of the emergent literature on race, gender, mothering, and work.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781927335024

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Laboring Positions
• Publisher: Demeter Press, CA
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1927335027
• ISBN 13: 9781927335024
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A groundbreaking exploration of Black women navigating motherhood and academia.Laboring Positions disrupts the dominant discourse on academic women’s mothering experiences. This collection centers Black women's voices, often silenced within the disembodied, patriarchal, and increasingly neoliberal work environment of academia.

This volume acknowledges the institutional challenges facing caregiving academics, while expanding the conversation by speaking against the private/public spheres approach. Laboring Positions privileges the hybridity between Black women’s mothering experiences and their working lives within and beyond the academy.

Explore diverse perspectives that offer cogent starting points to interrogate the cultural, political, and economic hierarchies of the academy. Discover themes that privilege Black mothering as central in the narratives, research, and models of existence and resistance for Black women’s survival. This collection is for academics, students, and anyone interested in Black women's experiences in higher education. Now is the time to amplify these voices and challenge the status quo.

About the Author

Sekile Nzinga-Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD in Human Development from the University of Maryland and has an MSW from The Ohio State University. Her current research focuses on the women of color in academe, Black women’s mothering experiences and practices; and women’s working lives.