***Baring Witness to Our Lives as Mothers in Academia****

Mari Castaņeda and Kirsten Isgro, Editors

As more women enter academia as students and intellectual workers, universities are being challenged to rethink policies in order to ensure a greater balance between family life and academic life as well as recognize the ways in which women are reshaping the cultural and intellectual dynamics of higher education. Despite emerging changes, mothers continue to struggle for a voice in an academic landscape that privileges students and scholars who are able to commit countless hours to their areas of study.

This volume aims to give voice to women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, administrators, and professors in order to bare witness to their success and the strategies they employed in their efforts to grapple with motherhood while in academia. In addition to testimonios (testimonial accounts) of women's lives as mothers in academia at various stages, the book will also include chapters that discuss theoretically and empirically the material conditions of working mothers in a moment when higher education is becoming more laborious. As the political economy of academic institutions shift towards corporate-based models of teaching, in both blatant and subtle ways, it's critical to ascertain how women's lives in the academy, and by extension their families, will be affected these structural-cultural changes.

We welcome essay proposals that address one of the following areas:
- Being a Mom as a traditional or non-traditional Undergraduate Student
- Balancing Graduate School and Motherhood
- Parenting While on the Higher Education Administrator and/or Professorial Track
- Policies that Support Mothers in Academia

Please send a 300-word ABSTRACT by April 15, 2009 to mari@comm.umass.edu and isgrok@plattsburgh.edu

Complete manuscripts will be solicited after abstracts are fully reviewed.
Please don't hesitate to contact us for further information:

EDITORS
Dr. Mari Castaņeda, Associate Professor
Dept. of Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 413-545-1307

Dr. Kirsten Isgro, Visiting Assistant Professor
Dept. of Communication, State University of NewYork Plattsburgh, 518-564-2407