Positionality

Positionality has become the cornerstone of much feminist scholarship and this was no exception at the 2019 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference and in our undergraduate course. Most presenters positioned themselves squarely within their work, incorporated their own experiences into their presentations, and spoke candidly and emotionally with their audiences. Positionality is important because it allows us to examine our own biases, privileges, backgrounds, and experiences.

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Our positionality as feminists and as curators is fraught with varying types of backgrounds, biases, privileges, and experiences. As such, we recognize that our curatorial choices, no matter how mindful our intentions, will likely reflect these backgrounds, biases, privileges, and experiences. Our goal is to create an archival space that truthfully reflects the spirit of the conference, the intentions of the speakers, and the experiences of the attendees. What follows are a few events and speakers we chose to highlight that seem to privilege speaker positionality.

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Motherhood

During the panel RhetComp Mamas Speak: Autoethnographies of Everyday Maternal Activism, Ruth Osorio, Nabila Hijazi, and Rose Keefe discussed their positionality as mothers working in academia. All three speakers mentioned feeling as though there is a disconnect between positions as mothers and their positions as scholars. To be a mother is to often not be seen as a serious scholar, and to work in academia is to often be seen as a failing mother. Here we see positionality as something that needs to be reconciled. However, we also see positionality as something that creates the opportunity for richer and more candid scholarship. These women contextualize their work through motherhood, which helps to develop ethos.

Ruth Osorio, a professor at Old Dominion University, gave a presentation entitled "Constellating with our Foremothers: Intergenerational Stories of Maternal Knowledge-Making in Rhetoric and Composition." Her presentation detailed interviews she conducted with three prominent scholars who are mothers: Jane Donawerth, Shirley Logan, and Malea Powell. Osario is inspired by indigenous values and practices surrounding mothering, one of the most prominent being ‘auntie culture,’ in which ‘aunties’ are elders who help take care of children. This fosters a culture of interdependence and shared childrearing. Osorio then finished her presentation by discussing her own experiences as a mother in academia. She showed the audience a picture of her holding her daughter June after defending her dissertation.

The next speaker, Nabila Hijazi, a professor at the University of Maryland- College Park, presented "Academic Death through Human Birth," in which she discussed her intersecting identities as a Muslim, a scholar, a mother, and a wife. She challenged the idea that Muslim women academics do not fit within feminist discourse, as well as the idea that the working Muslim woman somehow fails as a mother and wife. Hijazi explained that she has had to work hard to reconcile her identities as Muslim and feminist. She first thought that the two were in opposition—that she could not be a feminist because she was a conservative Muslim. Now, she embraces feminism as an integral part of her identity that complements rather than opposes her Muslim faith. Hijazi expressed that motherhood follows her everywhere; she carries it with her into all of her academic spaces. She reads her presentations to her children and asks for their feedback and her daughter, who is in college, serves as a personal advisor for all of her scholarly work.