Stories of the Academy: Learning from the Good Mother

by Mary Beth Spore, Marsha Harrison

Stories of the Academy looks at relationships between women entering the ranks of faculty in higher education and more experienced faculty. Occasionally these relationships are so mutually fulfilling that they lead to great satisfaction and personal reward and can be named Good-Mother relationships. These relationships are deeper and more profoundly influential than traditional professional relationships for they involve a mythic or spiritual dimension. The archetype of the Good Mother provides a way to name and explicate these relationships. Using mythology and philosophy as guides to come to understand these relationships, the book first defines the myth of the Good Mother, demythologizes the myth, presents Good Mother stories told in conversational form, and, ultimately, searches for the mythic meaning in those stories. Written for anyone in the academy, this book also has broader implications for other professionals, particularly women.

175 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book -- a psychologically-driven collection of narratives about university mentoring based on a myth-archetypal construction? What's not to like? But I was very disappointed. The first several chapters are short explanations and justifications for the editorial choices made and for the overall set up of the book; they are perfunctory and seem to be there because someone said "no one will read this unless you have a sound theory behind it." In general, it's dry writing; the stories are not well-integrated or organized, they are in many instances self-consciously forced into the "Good Mother" construct whether the mentoring figure is male or female, there is a distracting printing error where the same line appears on two consecutive pages, and the writing is deliberately "poetic" and ""feminine" -- including long poems of varying quality -- as if in contrast to the traditionally "masculine" writing style of the academy. It was a disappointment. I would prefer a straight set of narratives on mentoring, even though I love the idea of the "Good Mother." It just didn't work for me as presented in this particular book. With limited time at my disposal, this isn't one I would choose again.