JOSEPH GELFER

I have a short chapter in the new book Papa, PhD: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy edited by Mary Ruth Marotte, Paige Martin Reynolds and Ralph James Savarese (Rutgers University Press).

My chapter is called A River Runs through It: Queer Theory and Fatherhood. My publishing agreement only allows me to post 20% of the text, but here’s the abstract:

Queer theory is not just about the experiences of gay and lesbian people, but about troubling categories. We can queer almost anything, including fatherhood. This essay casts an autoethnographic glance at my attempts to combine queer theory, masculine identity and fatherhood. I show how my masculine identity, which has historically accommodated a wide array of performances which resist normative masculinity, is challenged for the first time by the idea of suckling my son. I frame this anxiety by a broader consideration of the effects that being a masculinities researcher have on fatherhood (the application of theory, comparisons to the body of literature) and how this process can prove problematic for the practice of fatherhood. I then go on to draw comparisons between the task of fatherhood and the production of academic research: the hours invested, the letting loose into the world, the identity and momentum gathered outside my direct control. I conclude by likening academic work to a bridge across a river: one side of the bank representing the default way of doing fatherhood, the other side promising brighter, more informed possibilities. The bridge enables us to reach the far side of the river, but ultimately we have to leave it behind to continue the paternal journey.

That sounds very serious, but the whole thing is played for laughs.

Two things happened in my email this morning that lead me to let you know about a new article of mine coming later in the year called A River Runs through It: Queer Theory and Fatherhood. First, a narcissistically-sourced Google alert told me that Redeyedtreefrog, a commenter on the blog Feminist Philosophers, highlighted the article as sounding interesting, which is not bad for something that has yet to be published. Second, I received the copy edit of the article from the copy editor. The article will appear in the anthology Papa, PhD: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy, edited by Mary Ruth Marotte, Paige Martin Reynolds and Ralph James Savarese, and published by Rutgers University Press. Description:

A River Runs through It: Queer Theory and Fatherhood

Queer theory is not just about the experiences of gay and lesbian people, but about troubling categories. We can queer almost anything, including fatherhood. This essay casts an autoethnographic glance at my attempts to combine queer theory, masculine identity and fatherhood. I show how my masculine identity, which has historically accommodated a wide array of performances which resist normative masculinity, is challenged for the first time by the idea of suckling my son. I frame this anxiety by a broader consideration of the effects that being a masculinities researcher have on fatherhood (the application of theory, comparisons to the body of literature) and how this process can prove problematic for the practice of fatherhood. I then go on to draw comparisons between the task of fatherhood and the production of academic research: the hours invested, the letting loose into the world, the identity and momentum gathered outside my direct control. I conclude by likening academic work to a bridge across a river: one side of the bank representing the default way of doing fatherhood, the other side promising brighter, more informed possibilities. The bridge enables us to reach the far side of the river, but ultimately we have to leave it behind to continue the paternal journey.

Of course, the book contains a whole bunch of other male liberal do-gooders:

Gaining a daughter: a father’s transgendered tale / Lennard J. Davis. Gifts from the sea / David G. Campbell. The luck of the Irish / F.D. Reeve. Shifting the tectonic plates of academia / Jerald Walker. Hair-raising experiences / John W. Wells. On writing and rearing / David Blake. How to do things with words / Ira L. Strauber. On fecundity, fidelity, and expectation: reflections on philosophy and fatherhood / J. Aaron Simmons. Sheathing the sword / Gregory Orfalea. Weighed but found wanting: ten years of being measured and divided / Robert Mayer. Vespers, matins, and lauds: the life of a liberal arts college professor / Ralph James Savarese. How white was my prairie / Mark Montgomery. Meniscus / Robert Gray. Once was lost / John Bryant. Shared attention: hearing Cameron’s voice / Mark Osteen. Accidental academic, deliberate dad / Kevin G. Barnhurst. Late fatherhood among the Baptists / Andrew Hazucha. Being a dad, studying fathers: personal reflections / William Marsiglio. Single dad in academia: fatherhood and the redemption of scholarship / Eric H. du Plessis. Superheroes / Stanford W. Carpenter. Maybe it is just math: fatherhood and disease in academia / Jason Thompson. Dreaming of direction: reconciling fatherhood and ambition / Mike Augsperger. Making a home for family and scholarship / Ting Man Tsao. Change is here, but we need to talk about it: reflections on black fatherhood in the academy / Jeffrey B. Leak. Vocabularies and their subversion: a reminiscence / John Domini. Balancing diapers and a doctorate: the adventures of a single dad in grad school / Charles Bane. It’s a chapter-book, huh: teaching, writing, and early fatherhood / Alex Vernon. Pitcher this: an academic dad’s award-winning attempt to be in two places at once / Colin Irvine. Odd quirks / Christopher Gabbard.