Tag Archives: Mother Studies

#Skillset Vote For My Project

Hello Friends
I really hope you’ll help me get this Mother Studies project started!

I’ve finally got my 3 word short description of my project:
#Hacking June Cleaver

Major Points:
Great class. Great projects.
I need your help to make Mother Studies a reality
I’m looking for a great team to bring a new area of study to the academy!

Description:  Mother Studies is an introduction to the concept of motherhood, fatherhood and family through a critical lens. Coursework includes articles, research, popular media, film, and literature to demonstrate that ‘mothering’, birthing, caregiving, and childrearing are actually ‘work’ in the true sense of the word. From pregnancy to ‘labor’ the requirements of women, physically, emotionally and spiritually are challenged and stretched, and therefore so are men’s. Participants examine changing perceptions of mothers throughout history, including some feminist theory, political theory, and sociological theory. Materials will predominantly be focused on representations of mothers in the United States, but we’ll also peek at global perspectives, policies, health statistics, and methods of conception. This degree takes a scholarly approach to ideas of motherhood, but students will be encouraged to examine their personal experiences as well. This degree offers students a chance to explore the evolution of family, gain understanding of the historic marginalization of women, and expand on notions of caregiving so we can collectively move future family experiences forward in educated and empowered ways. This is a useful degree for nurses, students of the social sciences, women’s and gender studies, philosophy, history, public health, early childhood studies, digital humanities, and education majors.

I made a power point and uploaded it to YouTube. This project incorporates many of the elements you have expressed interest in, including: syllabi collection, data mapping, pod-cast or video production, and coding. I promise this project will be a real collective endeavor. I need your unbiased, smart, and beautiful contributions. [CLICK] to see YouTube, or PDF file of project proposal is attached at the bottom of this post and here: Class Preso Final PDF

Plea – This is my thesis proposal
Bribe – My son (Ali Marpet) is in the top 100 NFL draft picks for the 2015 season. Swag to come….
__________________________________________
My skills (for this project or another) –

Project Management: I am used to successfully collaborating with short and long-term task-oriented groups. I’ve worked as a coordinator for large-scale events organizing teams across the country, and I collaborate annually with small academic teams creating conferences here in NYC which require regular meetings, spreadsheets, excel files, and deadlines. I recognize the importance of keeping projects on task with reasonable goals. This requires drive and flexibility, as well as quick thinking in a crisis. I feel very comfortable in this role, and will do my best for the greater good – whatever that is.

Outreach: Communication is my strongest skill. I’ve worked in media: radio, and tv. I’ve blogged professionally and I am good at creating press releases, media packets, and using social media. I have a fairly wide following between my various ventures, and I believe in the DH mandate for making work public. Communication is all about connection. I realize that. I look to get people excited and invested in important things.

Designer: I have designed and implemented several successful websites using WordPress and other platforms for projects, businesses, and organizations. I am graphically inclined, and good with branding and layout.

Developer: Mmmm…. not so much. But, I’m on a learning curve and open to new knowledge.

If any of you have questions about this project over the weekend, please write me and I will try to answer them, or clarify any points that need further explanation. Write me here or privately at MarthaJoyRose@gmail.com
I hope you’ll vote for this project.
Thanks Much!
#DHpraxis14
MAPPING MOTHER STUDIES PDF

Digital Praxis Class 2014-15

Digital Praxis Class 2014-15

Officially a Digital Humanist

I’m excited to say that I’m officially a digital humanist.

I just posted the first of my final papers online, and I’ll be sending a print copy to my professor as well.  Electric Mommyland; Writing a Sociological History Through Auto-Ethnographical Art and Music Performance Towards a Deeper Understanding of Everything Mom for Hester Eisenstein’s Sociology of Gender class at CUNY, The Graduate Center is here. [LINK]

A submission form invites users to post feedback and make suggestions for edits. These will be incorporated in my thesis (2015).

Thank you so much all your collaboration, and for being such a great group this fall.

Hyper Focus – What To Do When Everything and Everyone Are Important All The Time?

Is there an answer to “what to do when everything and everyone are important all the time?” Truth be told, the brain will do what the brain has been designed to– reduce the information into manageable segments. Some stuff will stick. Some won’t.

Laura Klein’s YouTube presentation posted on the CUNY commons for the DH Praxis class offered insight into the use of maps and graphs throughout history. Her demonstrations focused on the powerful influencing capabilities of data visualization.

I simultaneously skipped around watching Lev Manovich present live at MoMA in between pauses to Klein’s video last night. Manovich suggested that digital photography is the new art form now employed by billions of people. He described it as “new, young, and sexy.”

Meanwhile, I spent the past weekend at the 2nd annual conference for the New York Academy of Medicine. The NYAM festival was celebrating the 500th birthday of the anatomist Andreas Vesalius. Early anatomical drawings, it could be argued, were also maps of sorts, charting the human body as early as the 1500s. Dr. Brandy Schillace gave a talk titled “Naissance Macabre: Birth, Death, and Female Anatomy.”

The highlights of Dr. Schillace’s presentation were renderings focused on the pregnant form. The renderings of chaste females were often poised next to potted plants symbolizing the container quality of the pregnant woman. As Laura Klein suggested in her video, the symbolism indicated makes suggestions about how to best view the role of mother in Western culture. She is a vessel.

The afternoon at NYAM concluded with a presentation featuring ProofX 3D anatomical printing, which fashioned a heart valve over the next four hours. The demo-guy gave me his card. Armed with two lectures, several books, and some practical experience I suddenly felt empowered enough to log onto GitHub.

I plugged in a recent article on “Mothers Who Do It All.” Since I haven’t gotten into the programming end yet, I opted for the word cloud. Initially punching in 256 words from the article. I reduced them to 230 (so I could slightly control the visuals) and have uploaded the by-product here.

Word_Cloud_SmThe article cited wasn’t brilliant. It’s a rehash of the same old problem and doesn’t get to the point of possibly viewing women as intelligent procreative forces. Instead it’s a familiar subject from my days as an artist 20 years ago. How can women do it all, and make music too? (See MaMaPaLooZa). The word cloud isn’t particularly stunning either, but it represents a leap for in terms of the subject of “motherhood,” DH and how mapping might eventually lead me somewhere? (I couldn’t find anything of major consequence in my Google search).

Let me also conclude this blog by acknowledging that I recognize what a ‘soft’ subject motherhood is. To use Lev Manovich’s words, I’m not even sure it is very “sexy.” Even the word cloud looks “soft” evoking a “Hallmark Cards” visual. I know the subject doesn’t sound scientific or technical, and I’m not even sure what my angle is yet (although I have a few ideas). But as Laura Klein indicated in her presentation, while some cartographers, and data graph makers knew exactly what they were doing, others didn’t always have a clear concept at the onset.

If anyone finds any references to data, the digital humanities, and motherhood please send them my way. I’d be most interested. ~MJR

Theorizing Motherhood In DH

This week I am requesting permission to create an Individualized MALS degree that combines Digital Humanities with Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The purpose of this combined major is to weave DH praxis (theory and practice) and feminist maternal perspectives into a thesis project that identifies “Mother Studies” as potential new area of inter-disciplinary coursework within the academy.

ps3-sixasis-wireless-control-umbilical-cord-small-18242

As we all know (here in this class and on the blog) — Digital Humanities is a relatively new field that is currently exploring its relevance, theory, and action. “Attempts to define the digital humanities represents a foray into contested terrain” (Matthew Gold, Digital Humanities), and yet DH has been successful in a) accessing funding, b) perpetuating a discussion of itself, c) offering classes at universities around the world. While MOOCS are just one arena where DH exercises its muscle, there is much to explore that could be useful in examining and developing “Mother Studies.” A few of those platforms are: interactive texts (such as the ones featured on the Commons), feminist archives, online exhibits, and projects like UCLA’s Hypercities; which could facilitate a mapping of history that includes aspects of HERstory (populations that have not been included in normative discussions of the recorded past. See also, Cold Spring Harbor Library.

If Digital Humanities offers a glimpse into theory and practice of “Mother Studies,” then the starting place for accessing content will be drawn from existing sources in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies literature, popular culture, and identity politics. These things shaped the feminist movement(s) of the sixties, seventies, and eighties and have continued to inform subsequent generations of procreators. GC’s own Barbara Katz Rothman has been writing about birth and motherhood since the 1980s. I suggest multiple perspectives can be added as theoretical and material resources expand to include a social, philosophical, psychological, economic, and global discussion as it pertains to m/otherhood, fatherhood, and family study.

An examination into “Mother Studies” is the logical symbolic daughter of the ever expanding, and microscoping feminist discourse. In 2011 Sage Publishing released The Encyclopedia of Motherhood. The three-volume work included feminist arts organizations, activist agencies, and academics spearheading new work about motherhood. At the same time here in New York City I began a three-year museum project on the Upper East Side. The Museum of Motherhood focused on exploring and exhibiting academic and artistic works about women, mothers, and families.

Intellectuals who believe this subject has merit have laid much groundwork. In conclusion, by combining Digital Humanities with Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies I aim to construct my thesis project interactively. I will take an interdisciplinary approach to shaping the theory and practice of “Mother Studies” by a) pulling from existing sources, b) engaging the academic “collective,” c) establishing a framework with which to view the topic as a scholarly endeavor, b) utilizing DH theory and tools to enhance evaluation and discussion.

*Photo credit:

Photo Credit:
Company: TBWA\, SPAIN, Madrid
Executive Creative Director: Guillermo Gines and Juan Sanchez
Creative Director: Bernardo Hernandez
Copywriter: Vicente Rodríguez
Art Director: Bernardo Hernández and Ely Sánchez
Account Supervisor: Inés DIaz-Casariego
Advertiser’s Supervisor: Criistina Infante and Jorge Huguet
Photographer: Sara Zorraquino
Producer: Nuria Mazarío
The Outdoor Advert titled UMBILICAL CORD was done by Tbwa\ advertising agency for brand: Sony Playstation in Spain. It was released in the Apr 2007. Business sectors are: Cannes 2007 Press Bronze, Cannes 2007 Press, Point of Purchase posters.

Can Feminists Find DH Helpful?

Yup. I dove into the pool and didn’t check to see how deep the water was.

I’m still afloat, but holding my breath.

underwater-swimming-13634282841HsLYNDA.com is playing in the background. (S)he’s a man talking code, programming the new language of my life — and I’m not sure exactly what (s)he’s saying?

The twitter copy of tags is a little mysterious too. #InTheDarkAges #TwitterHelp #JustKidding #DHfeminist (There’s one tweet)

The “theory” of DH inspires me. Materially speaking, I’m sure most everyone in the group heard about the 3D printed car? (LINK to the story). I probably don’t need to say why it’s relevant, but I will. This technology rests at the intersection of exactly what we have been exploring in the theory and practice of DH.

I’ve been playing with some of this theory in my area of interest to see how DH might facilitate theorizing “New Maternalisms” and “Mother Studies.” I know it seems like a weird combo, but that’s how I got into all of this — A MOOC course out of Minnesota State last summer taught by feminist Jocelyn Fenton Stitt that set me on my current course.

The ways information can be digitized and shared across platforms seems like an amazing opportunity. That possibility includes disseminating valuable education to people who are performing caregiving work in institutional and private settings. We DO believe education makes our lives “more informed” if not “betta” — right?

So why not apply some “maternal thinking’ (Sara Ruddick) to an “emerging politics of peace,” and every other damn thing that really matters. Like, raising the next generation of DH’ers? Can feminists find DH helpful? I’m finding out! Here’s an interesting article on “Assessing Feminist Interventions In Digital Archives.”

Swimming slowly, but I’m doin’ it. As usual, before I found out how much I didn’t know, I felt pretty smart. (Sigh)