Conference Baby: Gendered Bodies, Knowledge, and Re/Turning to Academia

Inspired by children's nursery rhymes, this research poem is an autoethnographic exploration of the processes of bodily learning that takes place in the neoliberal university and what it is like to bring a baby along to a conference. The academic conference is a key site for academic socialization and the passing on of norms and values. In focusing on the body pedagogics of the academic conference, this poem reveals how different discourses of academic work, knowledge, and gender equity are communicated through bodies and become naturalized in academic cultures and values. It also rethinks the division between productive and reproductive labor when returning to academia.