ACADEMY FROM GRAD SCHOOL TO TENURE (AAA Annual Meeting Philadelphia
Marriott, December 2-6, 2009)
While children are becoming a regular sight at the annual AAA
meetings,there have been few public discussions about the everyday demands
of balancing the work of anthropology and the work of parenting. This
roundtable aims to be a practical intervention that explores the various
choices and challenges that anthropologists with children face in building
their careers. Our aim is to provide a forum in which scholars who are also
parents can share and reflect upon their diverse experiences as a way of
mentoring the next generation of anthropologists as they make difficult
decisions about their personal and professional lives.
The panelists will include anthropologists with different career
trajectories and different types of families. They will be at different
stages in their careers, ranging from graduate students and adjunct
professors to more established faculty. The participants will be asked to
briefly discuss how they have negotiated the competing demands of scholarly
work and parenting at different stages in their lives.
The roundtable discussion will then collectively consider the following
questions:
* How does parenting affect career choices and academic work in turn affect
parenting choices? How are these issues experienced differently for
scholars in different institutional positions?
* How are these experiences and decisions gendered? What is involved in
juggling scholarly, parental, and gender roles in academic contexts?
* What are the advantages and disadvantages of having children at various
periods in one's scholarly career? How can flexible academic schedules
serve as resources (or alternately cause difficulties) when balancing
parenting and life in the academy?
* What issues surround bringing children into the field? In what ways has
parenting shaped fieldwork plans, interactions in the field, and the
insights and texts that come out of fieldwork experiences?
* What are the ways in which departments, universities, and various funding
institutions support anthropologists with children? What barriers can they
raise? How might these be surmounted on both individual and policy levels?
We envision an open and lively dialogue with audience members, whose
experiences and insights will be welcomed.
If you are interested in participating please contact Susanne
Cohen(smcohen@umich.edu) by March 6, 2009. Send a brief email message
introducing yourself
and highlighting the issues that you feel particularly prepared to address.
Please note that participation in a roundtable does not preclude
participation in other types of sessions.
Roundtable Organizers: Susanne Cohen (University of Michigan) and Csilla
Kalocsai (Yale University), Student Representatives, Society for the
Anthropology of Work
