It is for her contribution – more than three decades of promoting the advancement of women in Canada’s universities and colleges – that O’Reilly has received the 2010 from the Canadian Association of University Teachers ().

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

O'Reilly is founder and director of the newly launched feminist scholarly and activist organization, the (MIRCI), developed from the former Association for Research on Mothering. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the , formerly the Journal of the Association for Research on Motherhood, now housed in the MIRCI along with , the , the and the forum. The MIRCI is also partnered with , which has two new titles out –  and .

In the newest CAUT bulletin, CAUT executive director James Turk called O’Reilly an illustrious scholar, a prolific writer and a devoted mentor and activist who “is a most deserving recipient of the Sarah Shorten Award.”

The Sarah Shorten Award was established in 1990 in honour of Sarah Shorten, who served as CAUT vice-president from 1982 to1983, and two terms as president (1983-1984 and 1984-1985), to recognize outstanding achievements in the promotion of the advancement of women in Canadian universities and colleges.

O'Reilly is also the editor and author of several books, including and .

Her other honours have included 1998 and 2009 91��ɫ Teacher of the Year awards and a 2007 Atkinson Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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“Over the last 25 years, the topic of motherhood has emerged as a central and significant topic of scholarly inquiry across a wide range of academic disciplines. A cursory review of motherhood research reveals that hundreds of scholarly articles have been published on almost every motherhood theme imaginable,” says O’Reilly, who coined the term "motherhood studies" to acknowledge and demarcate motherhood scholarship as a legitimate and distinctive discipline.

"Indeed, similar to the development of women studies as an academic field in the 1970s, motherhood studies, while explicitly interdisciplinary, has emerged an autonomous and independent scholarly discipline in the last decade," she says. "This intellectual tradition of maternal scholarship both made possible and created the need for an encylopedia on motherhood."

Founder and director of the newly formed (developed from the former Association for Research on Mothering at 91��ɫ), O'Reilly approached contributors and compiled articles by some 300 women scholars throughout the United States, Canada and beyond for the book.

The , the first scholarly reference devoted to the subject, covers a vast array of topics, including how the study of motherhood is almost completely ignored in archeology, mothers in popular culture, hip mamas, influential maternal theorists, the economics of motherhood, psychoanalysis, fertility, guilt, ecofeminism, refugees and the future of mothering. The encyclopedia touches on mothers, and what it means to be a mother in almost every country. It also looks at mothers in film, books, art and poetry, as well as in the Bible.

“The publication is for me a significant moment in motherhood scholarships as it confirms that motherhood has indeed arrived as a legitimate and distinct academic discipline and scholarly field." says O'Reilly. "As well, the encyclopedia, in bringing together for the first time over 700 motherhood topics from A to Z, from aboriginal mothering to zines, and in providing a detailed summary and a bibliography for each topic, is an invaluable resource for anyone – students, journalists, writers, researchers, community agencies – in need of an overview of a particular motherhood topic and/or interested in doing further research on the subject matter.”

Left: Andrea O'Reilly

The book delves into the anthropology of mothering, a discussion on advice literature for mothers, a chronology of motherhood and mother activists. It explores the concept of bad mothering, absentee mothers, alcoholism, ethics, HIV/AIDS, race, slavery, lesbian and bisexual mothers, breastfeeding and more. In addition, it examines terms, concepts, themes, debates, theories and texts of motherhood within history, geography and academia.

To O’Reilly (BA Hons. '85, MA '87, PhD '96), the publication of the encyclopedia is like the coming of age of mothering research. The scholarship of motherhood has been legitimized and recognized, she says.

She introduces the Encyclopedia of Motherhood with a quote from author Adrienne Rich: “We know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, than about the nature and meaning of motherhood.” And that is exactly what O’Reilly hopes the encyclopedia will change, that it will provide a glimpse into all things associated with and to mothering. The publication of the encyclopedia demarcates motherhood as an academic discipline and points to the future.

O’Reilly is the author of and . She is also the editor of 14 collections.

For more information, visit the Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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When Andrea O’Reilly received a call from a publisher expressing interest in an encyclopedia on motherhood, she knew her field of expertise had finally arrived.

O’Reilly, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Women’s Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and founder of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), has dedicated her career to the study of motherhood and having it recognized as a legitimate topic of scholarly inquiry.

This month her Encyclopedia of Motherhood was released by Sage Press – a 1,500-page, three-volume collection featuring 700 entries on just about every aspect of the complex topic.

But it still remains a “sidebar” subject, she added, even in women’s studies departments. “What isn’t really happening is motherhood is still not being taught in the mainstream courses, so it’s still being kind of ghettoized,” she said.

An academic examination of motherhood didn’t exist when O’Reilly worked to earn her PhD in English at 91��ɫ, she said, and that prompted her to design a course dedicated solely to the subject in 1990 – the first of its kind in Canada.

The complete article is .

The Toronto Star also interviewed O'Reilly for an :

Until recently, motherhood didn’t qualify as a subject worthy of scholarly study. The collective voice of mothers is seldom heard in ivory towers or corridors of power, or in the discussion of policies that affect us all.

“The minute you’re a mother, you’re aware of the absence,” says Andrea O’Reilly, 49, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Women’s Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. “Motherhood is the blind spot.” She wanted to change that.

In 1991, O’Reilly developed Canada’s first university course on motherhood, at 91��ɫ. The Internet was in its infancy. Supermom was taking flight. Women were thrashing around with work and children, resigned to exhaustion following “the second shift.”

Feminist writers and scholars were exploring motherhood, but often in isolation.

O’Reilly, who has three children, tapped into a hunger for research, debate and a grassroots community, along with the desire to reconcile feminism with mothering when the two were often at odds.

She held a conference, and was shocked when it attracted 150 researchers and academics from around the world. In 1998, she founded the Association for Research on Mothering, the first of its kind. It took on a life of its own.

Its journal, exploring everything from poverty to mothers in pop culture, popped up on university reading lists across the country and abroad.

Then came a publication division. Demeter Press has released 10 books, including one on mommy blogging and another called Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the Experts, which challenged conventional parenting advice.

Earlier this year, mounting debt forced ARM, which had space at 91��ɫ but never received operating funding, to close its doors. The university acknowledged the association’s renown and 550 paying members but would not provide funds.

This month, following a groundswell of support from researchers in 15 countries, including Australia, Brazil and Spain, the association was reborn as an independent organization. The new will be funded through memberships, sales of its publications, grants and fundraising, including a literary fundraiser in Toronto on May 21.

The complete article is available on .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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