Home/Work: A Feminist Poetic Inquiry of Academic Mothers’ Pandemic Experiences

Abstract

This article details a poetic inquiry that explored how academic mothers navigated the tensions between home/work during the pandemic: the simultaneous pulls of academia and motherhood in competing directions. Theoretically, we draw inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s concept of feminist homework. Feminist homework, according to Ahmed, is the work feminists do to interrogate and transform oppressive patriarchal structures. It is work carried home because such structures exist across the many domains we traverse in our daily lives, including home. Through poetic inquiry, we used data excerpts from 54 interviews to generate poetry exploring our research questions: (1) What did work do to home? (2) What did home do to work? and (3) How does poetic inquiry cultivate understandings about feminist homework? Throughout, we highlight methodological and aesthetic decisions we made to elevate the pains, strains, vulnerabilities, and courage these academic mothers displayed throughout the pandemic.