This September the Museum of Motherhood is extremely pleased to welcome two new amazing people to our fall semester team. Please join us in our growing excitement to get to work on some great new projects in grant writing and art-sourcing as we dive into more about moms’ lives and work.
My name is Jade Jemison. I’m a 2nd-year MFA student on the Nonfiction track at USF. I write about relationships, reproductive health and treatment, culture, how trauma manifests in adulthood, and the effects of religious upbringings. I also study mother-daughter relationships in Black literature. I study how they are portrayed and how the representation of these relationships affects our community and societal expectations of Black daughters. I’m also passionate about discovering ways to support mothers, provide literature education to them, and the process of creating scholarships for mothers who need childcare (while attending school, conferences, writing retreats, etc).
In this grant writing internship, I’d love to learn about grant writing as a field: how to research grants, how to apply for grants (both in the process and writing), how to manage and reapply for grants, how to identify grants that fit a specific criteria, and how to evaluate grants. I’d love to gain more skills in this area.
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome
Tori Wright – Bio: I am a 26 year old mother of a one year and pregnant with our next little one coming soon. I have a Bachelors degree in Anthropology from Ohio University and currently working on earning my Masters in Museum Studies from University of Oklahoma. For a couple years after graduating from Ohio University I worked as a cultural resource manager, traveling doing archaeology surveys for a variety of companies. I have worked with young children as a daycare worker of nanny since that position while I got married and started my own family. The journey of motherhood that I have personally been through the past couple years has changed my life in ways I could have never imagined. I have seen my sister, friends and close family members become mothers throughout my life, but nothing compares to going through it yourself. I am excited to work with MoM to see how this journey has changed others. As well as working to push the boundaries especially in these enlightened days of what the world thinks motherhood is. The journey is different for anyone that goes through it and art is a wonderful way to be able to express the individual stories as well show the world what it really means to be a mother.
*If you are a mother artist making art, literature, music, or scholarship about your experiences, please write to us. We are working on a schedule of presentations throughout the 2022-23 year.
I could begin this report so many ways, but let me start by sharing a recent full-circle experience.
Last month, I received an internship application through our online portal. The inquiry came from the daughter of the woman who used to manage the MOM website as well as the MaMaPalOOza website in early 2000. So, this intern applicant turned out to be Emma Andrews, and her mother, Amy Andrews, brought her daughter to our New York location when she was only about ten years old.
This totally rocked my world. So, let me please share Emma’s bio with you now and welcome her to her summer internship with MOM. Full circle:
Emma Andrews (they/she) is entering their junior year at Binghamton University. She is a history major and mathematical sciences minor. She is pursuing a career as a public programmer in museums, but wouldn’t be unhappy teaching calculus either! They prefer to focus on all areas of history, rather than hone in on one speciality. In her free time, Emma loves to read in their hammock and is a bit of a movie buff (although with admittedly terrible taste in films). They are particularly passionate about queer studies and are looking forward to integrating that passion into their culminating project during her internship at the Museum of Motherhood.
Emma will be working this summer creating a series of resources regarding queerness in families. There will be resources created for both parents and children, in hopes of promoting and fostering more productive and respectful conversations about the queer community. The children’s presentation will feature child friendly language and concepts to help educate children on different family types and identities. Her internship portion aimed at parents will feature many of the same definitions as the children’s presentation but expanded, as well as “how to’s” regarding having respectful conversations with their own children about queer topics, such as identity, pronouns, and the potential for their own future families. Additionally, they will be putting together a short research project for those interested in the history of queer studies. Their research will be a guide through the evolution of the queer identity, with an emphasis on modern changes within these ideas, particularly through a legislative lens.
During their time at MOM, Emma hopes their project will provide help to those in need of queer resources and education, especially in states affected by anti-gay legislation. She wants these resources to be available for anyone of any age or role, and available in any location at all times. If the government or schools cannot provide the education necessary to reflect a diverse community, they want their resources to do that job.
Emma Andrews
Now for Extensive Updates! Read on:
There’s been a lot of activity at MOM over the last several months. I thought it might be good to connect everyone and keep you all updated.
Please join me in welcoming several new team members.
Deborah Gelch, a senior executive with a wealth of experience in non-profits, administration, and fundraising has joined us as our new “Strategic Advisor”. She brings with her knowledge of Salesforce, specific technological advances in CRM management, and a windfall of support including fundraising initiatives. We have been meeting weekly over the last several months and she has already imported a host of information into our database. Together, we are aiming for an October 1 fun-raiser in St. Petersburg.
Welcome too, our new website developer, Elena Rodz, who will be working on WordPress updates, our online store, and memberships moving forward. She is currently updating the MOM Team page. Please, do look for updates soon.
Kasia Nowackijoined MOM this year in the capacity of ‘Educational Liaison and Development’. To that end, she has been strategically working on multiple avenues of MOM growth internally and in collaboration with other institutions. She also facilitates tech at our monthly online events, happening the 22nd of each month.
Donna Lewis, architect, artist, and native New Yorker has joined our Executive Fundraising Board. This is hugely exciting as our goals for this active committee are top of mind and imperative for new growth. We hope to have others join Donna on this important new endeavor.
Since fall 2021, we have welcomed three onsite Residencies in October, December, and April. The summer will welcome two additional Artist Residents, and two more in the fall of 2022, plus the three last summer for a total of ten, even in the midst of COVID!
We also welcome four new interns, and another USF graduate student starting in the fall. Our summer interns are: Emma Andrews, Sarah Akomoh, Teddy Friedline, andMary Noah. A hearty welcome to each! They will all be working on a variety of initiatives including grant writing, teaching tools, journal publication, and social media.
MOM participated in the AEHK Studio Tour in St. Pete featuring a newly built vestibule for seeing exhibits from the front entrance. As an artist, I was able to enjoy two artist-grants (one for public art in Seminole Park and one for editorial help with some of my current writing).
I filed for ‘fictitious name‘ status for MOM (DBA Museum of Motherhood) under our IRS registered 501c3 non-profit MOM Art Annex in Florida. I am also segwaying out of the Motherhood Foundation in NY, as it is redundant to maintain both.
For the purposes of clarity: the MOM Art Annex is currently serving as our incubator of the realization of our own fully functioning, free standing museum structure. Renderings for this vision are online.
Our new ‘Educational Development” Coordinator, Kasia Nowacki and I worked for several months updating the language on the MOM website as well as our internal documents to reflect changing attitudes along with more inclusive language. Our newest intern, Teddy Friedline continues this enterprise at the JourMS website. We are grateful for these efforts.
Kasia and I also made repeated attempts to pioneer projects with Eckerd College. We also reached out to the Museum Studies Department at UF, and began research on USF degrees locally in St. Pete that might coordinate well with MOM’s ongoing activities. I attended the Eckerd College Job Fair for summer internships and we have a few ideas for bringing collaborations to the fore in the fall.
Our annual MOM Conference was a beautiful and smart gathering over Zoom this year. The theme was Creativity for a Cause and the inspiration flowed from a work-in-progress-film on miscarriage to several thematic works on home-site productions during COVID from artists and academics. Thanks to the entire Academic Board for their involvement in this!
We started a *NEW ONLINE COMMUNITY– This is a place to connect and interact. This is where we will host our annual conferences for those who want to attend remotely. This is also where we host ongoing monthly events the 22nd of each month 7-8:30PM EST (Roksana Badruddoja will be with us in June conducting an intergenerational healing workshop), and this is also where we will be building out some of our coursework.
During the month of May, Mary Noah, who is with us for the summer, and comes with some non-profit experience, worked on a rebranding kit for MOM along with a Social Media Calendar. She will pivot to new activities in the coming months.
Our new Living Board 2022 is active too, as we waveLexy Valdes(who began her journey with us as an intern and stayed for THREE years), on her way and wish her the best with her medical school studies. Our newest Living Board members are: Zabrina Shkurti– President, Nicole Musselman– Editor JourMS, and Tracy Sidesinger who returns as our Residency Director.
Finally, I just received word about leading a workshop on New Technologies at the annual FAM (Florida Association of Museums) Conference in September. I think this will spur me on to do more research on tools available to us for online reach. I’m excited to bring updates regarding MOM to this event. The conference takes place in Miami this year and includes hundreds of museum professionals from the state of Florida.
So, what’s the action item here? Big goals here are keeping you updated, letting you witness the progress for yourselves, and bringing team members together in the spirit of MOM.
*IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO YOU THINK MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN US: one of our boards, our new MEMBERSHIP community, pt staff, or MOM development, PLEASE DO SEND THEM OUR WAY: INFO@MOMmuseum.org
Hello MOM Family! We are thrilled to announce our two most recent additions to our amazing team, Teddy Friedline and Sarah Akomoh. Teddy will work closely with our JourMS editor to ensure a high-quality publication representing all the latest in motherhood studies. Sarah will work towards securing grants for our organization to continue our march into the future, securing our place for years to come.
New to MOM this Summer
Teddy L. Friedline (they/them) is a recent graduate of Washington College, where they won the 2022 Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate writing prize in the nation. Their creative work, which often focuses on motherhood, can be found in Yes Poetry, streetcake, Burning Jade Magazine, and elsewhere. They are co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of FAIRY PIECE MAG, a literary magazine focused on breaking old rules and creating new ones.
They are especially excited to be working on MOM’s Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS), reviewing both creative and academic work. Teddy also looks forward to promoting JourMS widely through social media and exploring how to better disseminate the incredible contributions of our amazing authors and artists through the digital humanities.
Also Please Welcome
Sarah Akomoh
Sarah Akomoh is currently a first year MA student with a concentration in literature at USF. Her research interests are primarily connected to Black feminism and the dynamics of womanhood for both African and African American women. She is excited to intern at The Museum of Motherhood this summer and can’t wait to learn and give her research skills to the grant writing process.
Through the course of her internship, she commits to using her research skills to learn and then secure general operating support for the Museum of Motherhood through various grant writing initiatives. As part of moving the Museum forward, she will also research local and national grants and come up with a plan to support the finances of the MOM Museum. Membership and loyalty is a key dynamic feature of the MOM Museum. Therefore, Sarah aims to collate past contributors and reach out to our members to appreciate and initiate potential future patronage and sponsorship.
Passionate about topics related to m/otherhood? Reproductive identities? Art? HERstory? Mothers Making Art? Mothers in Academia? Women and Gender Studies? Lifelong students can follow the Museum of Motherhood here, join our new ONLINE COMMUNITY, and we appreciate any and all support? Be sure to follow us on social media and check out our virtual storefront for merchandise!
The MOM Conference 2019 is sponsored by the Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center and the Manhattan College Department of Sociology
Calling all sociologists, women’s, sexuality, and gender scholars, masculinity studies scholars, birth-workers, doctors, maternal psychologists, motherhood and fatherhood scholars, artists, performers: This conference call for papers focuses on uncovering, naming and rewriting traumas of motherwork, pregnancy and birth. We especially aim to make visible those topics related to (dis)abilities and other marginalized positionalities, relying on Patricia Hill Collins’ conceptualization of motherwork as mothering that is designed for the survival and success of the next generation in the context of oppression. We recognize traumas in multiple forms, originating before, during, and after pregnancy and birth and throughout motherhood, contextualized by the intersectional identities of those traumatized. We encourage presenters to unpack the sociocultural domain and the medicalized environment within which traumas often occur, embracing and analyzing meaning-making, as Barbara Katz Rothman and others would have us do, in the areas of maternal health and well-being.
We intend the conference to serve as a site of resistance as we reframe and reconstruct the landscape of embodied trauma within motherwork, pregnancy and birth and the ongoing labor of mothers and caregivers everywhere. We recognize the scale, variance, and duration of trauma and hope to support and empower those who most need it.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
Intersectional identities as the context of motherwork, pregnancy and birth traumas
Motherwork, pregnancy and birthing with (dis-)abilities, illness, and children with special needs
Biomedical and cultural discourses of motherwork, pregnancy, and birth, including issues related to marginalized identities, fertility treatment, gender, and intersex identities
Normative constructions of gender in motherwork, pregnancy and birthing
Child and maternal psychology interventions, alternative therapies, and results
Breastfeeding ambivalences, obstacles, and outcomes
Future wombs, including transplants, artificial constructions, cloning, and surrogacy
Art as healing and activism as visible resistance
Embodied resistance to socially constructed proscriptions and conventions about motherwork, pregnancy, and birth, especially as contextualized within marginalized positionalities
Narratives surrounding:
High-risk pregnancies, pregnancy-related illnesses, and birthing complications
Cesarean Section, Episiotomy and other Obstetric Violence
Stillbirths or Therapeutic Terminations
Pregnancy loss, Alternative Therapies, and Healing
Individuals conducting research, making art, working in hospital or alternative birth settings, and presentations by mothers, family members, and students as well as auto-ethnographic perspectives are welcome
All submissions for this conference should be considered for submission to the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS), an academic, peer-reviewed journal devoted to Mother Studies. You may also submit for the conference only if you wish. Abstracts must include a title and 50-150 words for individual papers, panels, and other submission types (e.g. performance, media, music). Go to MOMmuseum.org and look for the “Conference Submissions” tab or submit a word doc. to info@MOMmuseum.org by Dec. 1
The international MOM Conference is an annual event that features research, scholarship, and creative collaboration in the area of Mother Studies. Each year, the academic committee organizes university experiences that are interdisciplinary and highlight scholarship in the area of reproductive justice, maternal health, feminist theory, gender studies, literature, and the arts. The conference is organized through the Museum Of Motherhood (M.O.M.) and has partnered with multiple institutions throughout the years (2005-present), including Manhattan College, USF Tampa, Marymount Manhattan College, Columbia, ProCreate Project, Mamapalooza, and ARM now renamed MIRCI to name a few.
