Intern_Projects_Descriptions - Dr. Aurelie Athan’s Lab, Columbia Teachers College

The Museum Of Motherhood welcomes you to volunteer/intern opportunities!

We are interested and invested in you having productive and positive experiences. Our specially designed portal is forthcoming: IFFresearch.us is our specially created site for housing the Institute For Family Research and Development, is a student-run, Internet learning center. In the meantime, you can find out more about expectations and volunteer opportunities by downloading the document Intern Projects Descriptions above. You can also write: MuseumOfMotherhood@gmail.com directly.

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MOM_Conference_2013

The Mother Studies Graduate Certificate Program provides an interdisciplinary forum to explore the exciting new field of Mother Studies. Offered in an exclusively online format through Minnesota State Mankato’s nationally and internationally respected Gender and Women’s Studies Department in collaboration with the Museum of Motherhood, it will provide interested students with a background of the history of the family, issues facing contemporary families, and controversies within gender studies and society about motherhood. Students interested in careers in activism, family advocacy, non-profits, human resources, and business, just to name a few, will find this historical perspective and new directions for thinking about the role of mothers in society to be invaluable.

‘Her’story: Annual ongoing conferences in the areas of arts, academe and mother studies have been taking place as part of the international Mamapalooza l MOM Conference annually in NYC since 2006. Past collaborators have included: Women’s Media Center, Association For Research On Mothering (ARM), and Marymount Manhattan College and have included subjects like Mothers in the Arts, Literature, Media and Popular Culture, as well as The Vulnerable Mother: Social Interactions, Institutions and Systems of Cultural Values. In addition, MOM was part of the 2008 Toronto Conference, ‘Motherhood Movement’ where leading women’s organizations including Moms Rising, Brainchild Magazine and Code Pink participated in Feminist dialogue with regard to mothering. Those events were captured in a film, ‘The Motherhood Movement – You Say You Want A Revolution’, by Joy Rose and a book, ‘The 21st Century Motherhood Movement’ by Dr. Andrea O’Reilly. In addition, Laura Tropp’s classes at Marymount Manhattan College , ‘Mediating Motherhood: Historical and Contemporary Representations of the Mother’ are ongoing.

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PARTNERSHIP WITH MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

Mothering Studies and Reproductive Justice Graduate Online Certificate (MSOC)

Gender and Women’s Studies Department, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Value of the MSOC: The Mothering Studies and Reproductive Justice graduate certificate program provides an interdisciplinary forum to explore the exciting new field of mothering studies. Offered through Minnesota State Mankato’s nationally and internationally respected Gender and Women’s Studies Department with support from the Museum of Motherhood (NY), it will provide interested students with a background of the history of the family, issues facing contemporary families, and controversies within gender studies and society about motherhood. Students interested in careers in activism, family advocacy, non-profits, reproductive services, human resources, and business will find this historical perspective and new directions for thinking about the role of mothers in society to be invaluable.

MSOC Requirements: Students must complete the Introduction to Online Learning, three 600 level classes, the capstone seminar (1 credit), and one graduate elective (500/600) to complete this program.

Mid-August:

1 credit Introduction to Online Learning

Introduces certificate students to online learning at MSU. Skills to be learned include uploading and downloading documents, familiarity with D2L functions such as discussions, chats, and dropboxes, working with digitized films, the use of Skype, and how to remotely access MSU library resources.

GWS 605 Foundations of Mothering Studies (3 credits) Online

Mothering Studies is an exciting new field emerging from the intersections of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship and global activism by mothers. GWS 605 meets student demand, helping to prepare them for thesis/APP projects and future social justice work. GWS 605 offers scholarly, cultural, and activist perspectives on the practice of mothering. Topics include: an overview of the rise of mothering studies, historical and cross-cultural perspectives, feminist theories of maternal subjectivity and maternal experience, reproductive rights and childcare, and global maternal activism. Foundational feminist concepts such as the social construction of gender, intersectionality, and tensions between theory and activism will be explored.

GWS 635 Mothers at the Margins (3 credits) Online
Mothers of color, immigrant mothers, single mothers, working class mothers, LGBT mothers, and mothers of stigmatized children (disabled children, LGBT children, for example) are often at the margins of our society and our critical attention. This course brings these mothers from margin to center to investigate their position in society, their roles in social movements, and their contributions to feminist thought and activism.

GWS 675 Museum of Motherhood (1 credit) Online

1 credit for capstone presentation of research/activist/media projects at the annual Museum of Motherhood conference held in May. Students will work collaboratively in working on creating and revising their 15 minute presentations for this conference held annually in May.

GWS 670 Reproductive Justice (3 credits)

This course examines the full spectrum of reproductive justice issues from a mothering studies perspective. These include: the politics of birth control, abortion, reproductive technologies, fetal personhood, pre-natal care, empowered birth, and adoption. Social debates and legislation impacting women’s reproductive choices will be examined along with feminist activism related to these issues.

Suggested Electives:

NPL 673 (3 credits) Online

This course provides an introduction to working in the non-profit field.

GWS 555 Politics of Sexuality (3 credits)

More info: Jocelyn Stitt, PhD Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Minnesota State U. E-Mail: jocelyn.stitt@mnsu.edu

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Museum Members Gain Access To Our Extensive Online Article Archive – Contact us: MuseumOfMotherhood@gmail.com

Curriculum: 14 credits

  • 1 credit Introduction to Online Learning
  • 3 credits of GWS 615 Foundations of Mothering Studies
  • 3 credits GWS 605 Mother Studies in the Community: Program Management
  • 3 credits GWS 635 Mothers at the Margins
  • 3 credits GWS 670 topics seminar Ex: Mothers in Popular Culture
  • 1 credit GWS 675 capstone presentation of research/activist/media projects at the annual Museum of Motherhood conference held in May. Students will work collaboratively in working on creating and revising their 15 minute presentations for this conference held annually in May

For more information contact: Lynn Kuechle, MuseumOfMotherhood@gmail.com

Academic Committee

Dr. Laura Tropp is an Associate Professor of Communication and Chair of the Communication Arts Department at Marymount Manhattan College, a small liberal arts college located in New York City. For the past five years, Dr. Tropp has been exploring representations of pregnancy and motherhood in media. A piece titled,  “Faking a Sonogram’: Representations of Motherhood on Sex and the City” appeared in Journal of Popular Culture. She recently completed another manuscript titled “The Backseat Pregnancy: Fetuses, Fathers, and Television” which examines fatherhood and pregnancy.  She is currently at work on a book-length manuscript on pregnancy and media titled, A Womb with a View: Pregnancy in Changing Media Environments. Laura’s work has allowed her to talk to pregnant mothers across the country and to explore the representation of pregnancy in popular culture on-line, on television, in film, and in unexpected aspects of society.

Aurelie Athan, Ph.D. is a full-time lecturer and MA Program Coordinator in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. She studies positive adaptation across the lifespan with a focus on women’s development. Her current research is on the subjective well-being of mothers. She aims to re-conceptualize postpartum psychopathology using a feminist lens and to illuminate women’s positive experiences of adaptation and spirituality within the institution of motherhood. Concurrently, she is critically examining the history of funding for women’s health research/female scientists and promoting the rationale for the creation of a new interdisciplinary field of maternal theory.

Dr. Jocelyn Fenton Stitt is a scholar, writer, motherhood movement activist, mentor, and mom. She is the co-editor of Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse, a collection of essays that focuses on mothering as an intelligent practice, deliberately reinvented and rearticulated by mothers themselves. Stitt has been active in mothering studies since she first began teaching a course on mothers in popular culture in 1999 at the University of Michigan. She has presented at many conferences on the topics of feminist mothering, mothers and work, and work/life balance. Recent essays include work on maternal peace movements published in The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It and in the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, and on the Brooke Sheilds/Tom Cruise postpartum depression debate in Mediating Moms: Mothers in Popular Culture. Jocelyn is an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at Minnesota State University where she teaches courses on global feminism, postcolonial culture and theory, and feminist mothering. Stitt earned a Ph.D. In English Literature and Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan.

Elizabeth Podnieks is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University, Toronto. Her teaching and research interests include motherhood, modernism, life writing, popular/celebrity culture, and scholarly editing. She is the author of Daily Modernism: The Literary Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Antonia White, Elizabeth Smart, and Anaïs Nin (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2000), and the co-editor of Hayford Hall: Hangovers, Erotics, and Modernist Aesthetics (Southern Illinois UP, 2005). Podnieks has also guest edited two special issues of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies: Summer 2002, and Summer 2009. She is the editor of Rough Draft: The Modernist Diaries of Emily Holmes Coleman, 1929-1937 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

Joy Rose, Founding Director M.O.M.