WMST 350 Eileen Boris Fall 1998 221 Minor Hall T-TH 2-3:15 p.m. 982-2926 337 Cabell Hall ecb4d@virginia.edu Office Hours: T: 3:30-5; Th: 9-12 Mothers and Motherhood in America Course Description Mom, Mommy, Mamma. Mother Love. Mother Work. Mother's Day. Good and bad mothers haunt the imaginative and political landscape as the nation debates day care, welfare reform, and teenage pregnancy. We struggle over how to balance work and family: is the wage earning mother a contradiction? We ask if all women are fit for mothering and argue over whether and under what circumstance women should become mothers. We wonder if men can mother. This course explores motherhood and mothering as individual experience, social status, cultural construction, public policy, and political force. Our focus is the United States, present and past, with concern for the ways that class, race, ethnicity, religion, region, age, sexuality, and health have shaped mother's lives and motherhood as an institution. Topics range from reproductive choices, birthing technologies, and infant feeding to the labor of mothering under diverse economic and social circumstances to motherhood as discourse, image, and representation. We explore feminist theories about mothering and mothers as political actors. Course Requirements Class participation is a requirement for learning in this course. For this reason, it is absolutely essential that you complete all of the readings by the beginning of the period listed in the agenda below. I have tried to keep the reading within manageable limits; the reading varies by difficulty and denseness. Some readings are compelling; others, more factual. Grades will be based on a reading diary (20%), a take-home final (25%), two written assignments (one, 15%; the other, 25%) and class participation (15%). The Reading Diary This should be kept in a loose-leaf folder that you can pass in 4 times during the semester. The first entry should discuss your expectations for the course and set forth your own learning agenda. In the last entry, you should evaluate yourself in terms of your goals and expectations. There should be an entry for each set of readings; the length will vary. You may use your diary to react to the readings on a personal level as well as to analyze, compare and contrast, or connect the readings to other knowledge. You should focus your entry on the topic rather than merely paraphrase individual entries. Each entry should be around a page long, but it really depends on what you have to say. The diary can be handwritten. You should also think of your diary as a place to formulate questions or observations for class discussion. I will collect the diary on September 15, October 8, November 12, and December 10. The diaries will be graded at the end of the term as to completeness, development, and engagement. A grade of A or B in this class requires a complete diary. Written Assignment. You are to complete two assignments, one due October 27 and the second due December 3. One is to be three to five pages (15%) and the other seven to ten pages (25%). You have three options, of which you are to do two. You need to talk with me about your assignment focuses in advance. Ethnography or Oral History Observe or interview a mother (or mothers) about the practice of motherhood and how they regard their experience. For ethnography, you might watch the interactions of mothers with their children on a playground or in a shopping center. For oral history, you might interview a woman about her experiences as a mother and a daughter or two children of the same mother or a mother and her daughter or son. Representation Analysis Choose any media: high, popular, folk culture; written, aural, visual. Discuss constructions, representations, discourses, portrayals. You may create a collage, slide show, or presentation in another media as a substitute for the shorter paper. Policy Brief Take a current issue^×surrogate motherhood, day care, welfare reform, parental leave, abortion^×and write your recommendation to the President or Congress for action. In doing so, outline the issue, present the various positions and possibilities, and justify your recommendation(s). Take-Home Final Exam: Given out the last week of class. Books for Purchase There is a packet of readings to purchase at the Copy Shop, 5-B Elliewood Ave. I will place a copy of the packet and of the books on reserve at Clemons Library. The following are available for purchase in the University of Virginia Bookstore: Rima D. Apple and Janet Golden, eds., Mothers and Motherhood: Readings in American History, Ohio State University Press, 1997 (MM in Agenda) Alexis Jetter, Annelise Orleck, Diana Taylor, eds., The Politics of Motherhood: Activist Voices from Left to Right, University Press of New England, 1997 (PM) Jane Lazarre, The Mother Knot, Duke Univ. Press, 1997 Agenda (Packet readings *) September 3 Introducing Ourselves Mother Talk and Mother Work Ruddick, "Maternal Thinking;"* Hill Collins, "Shifting the Center: Race, Class and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood;"* "Forum: Giving Women the Business: On winning, losing, and leaving the corporate game;"* Hirsch (PM); Recommended: Polatnick (MM) 15-17 Maternal Subjectivity Lazarre Mothers and Their Children Lorde, "Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist's Response;"* Rich, "Mother and Son, Woman and Man;" "Motherhood and Daughterhood;"* Glubka, "Out of the Stream: An Essay on Unconventional Motherhood;"* Mary TallMountain, "The Disposal of Mary Joe's Children" * 29-October 1 Mother's Milk and Mother Love Salmon, Lewis, Golden, Weiner; Recommended: Blackwell, Simonds (MM) 6-8 Constructions of Motherhood Apple, Feldstein, (MM); Hays, "Intensive Mothering: Women's Work on Behalf of the Sacred Child;"* Kaplan, "Sex, Work and Mother/Fatherhood"* No Class: Reading Holiday I am away Oct. 10-26 visiting at Tokyo Christian Women's University. Schedule subject to change during this period. 15 Lesbian Motherhood (Guest Speaker) Lewin, "Negotiating Lesbian Motherhood: The Dialectics of Resistance and Accommodation"*; Moraga, Mulley (PM) Remembering Motherhood (Possible Film) Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens;"* Shroff, "Mother," Sasaki, "The Loom," Dhillon, "The Parrot's Beak"* 22 Adoption (Guest Speaker) Talbor, "Attachment Theory: The Ultimate Experiment"* Sharing Our Work Students will share their first assignment findings. I will discuss what I learned about motherhood in Japan. Adler (MM) 29-November 10 Motherhood and Peace In conjuncture with the Nobel Peace Laureates Conference, we will devote two weeks to this topic. Ruddick, "Mothers and Men's War;" "Notes Toward a Feminist Maternal Peace Politics;"* Ruddick (PM); Pollitt, "Marooned on Gilligan's Island: Are Women Morally Superior to Men?;"* "Environmental Activism," 23-69, 77-83; (PM); Recommended: "Mothers' Resistance Against the State," 141-208 (PM) 12-17 Race and Ethnicity Weinberg (MM); Hill Collins, "Black Women and Motherhood;"* Segura, "Working at Motherhood: Chicana and Mexican Immigrant Mothers and Employment;"* Blee (PM) Recommended: Shaw, Meagher (MM) 19-December 1 Motherhood and Reproduction Ulrich, Lewis and Lockridge, Marsh, Ross, Mathews and Zadak, (MM); Arditti (PM); Recommended: Leavitt, Gordon (MM) Motherhood and Social Policy: Work and Welfare Boris, Goodwin (MM); "Subsistence Struggles," 87-137 (PM); Recommended: Ladd-Taylor, Sanchez, Curry (MM) Sharing Our Work; Future Thoughts Students share findings from second assignment and we think about the future of motherhood, motherhood in our futures. Final exam handed out. Take Home Final Due By December 21 at Noon. ***** Table of COntents: Women's Studies 350: Mothers and Motherhood in America Fall 1998 Eileen Boris Table of Contents Ideology and Practice "Forum: Giving Women the Business: On winning, losing, and leaving the corporate game," Harper's, 295 (December 1997) Margaret Talbor, "Attachment Theory: The Ultimate Experiment," The New York Times Magazine, May 24, 1998 Sara Ruddick, "Maternal Thinking," Feminist Studies, 6 (Summer 1980) Sharon Hays, "Intensive Mothering: Women's Work on Behalf of the Sacred Child," The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale, 1996) Ellen Lewin, "Negotiating Lesbian Motherhood: The Dialectics of Resistance and Accommodation," in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, Glenn, Chang, and Forcey, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1994) E. Ann Kaplan, "Sex, Work and Mother/Fatherhood," Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama (New York: Routledge, 1992) Race and Motherhood Patricia Hill Collins, "Shifting the Center: Race, Class and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood," in Representations of Motherhood, Bassin, Honey, and Kaplan, eds. (New Haven: Yale, 1994 Patricia Hill Collins, "Black Women and Motherhood," Black Feminist Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990) Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1983) Beheroze F. Shroff, "Mother" R.A. Sasaki, "The Loom" Kartar Dhillon, "The Parrot's Beak," >From Asian Women United of California, Making Waves: An Anthology (Beacon Press, 1989) Denise A. Segura, "Working at Motherhood: Chicana and Mexican Immigrant Mothers and Employment," in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, Glenn, Chang, and Forcey, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1994) Mothers and Their Children Audre Lorde, "Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist's Response," Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, N.Y.: the Crossing Press, 1984) Adrienne Rich, "Mother and Son, Woman and Man" "Motherhood and Daughterhood," Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976) Shirley Glubka, "Out of the Stream: An Essay on Unconventional Motherhood," Feminist Studies 9 (Summer 1983) Mary TallMountain, "The Disposal of Mary Joe's Children," in Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women, Paula Gunn Allen, ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989) Mothers, War, and Peace Sara Ruddick, "Mothers and Men's War," "Notes Toward a Feminist Maternal Peace Politics" from Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) Katha Pollitt, "Marooned on Gilligan's Island: Are Women Morally Superior to Men?" The Nation, December 28, 1992 *******