Crystalizing Layered Approaches to MotherScholar Expressions in COVID-19: A Photovoice and Autoethnographic Study

ABSTRACT The MotherScholar identity demonstrates tensions, subjectivities, pluralities, and embodiment of multiple identities exacerbated by the sheltering at home conditions of COVID-19, in which MotherScholars simultaneously enact maternal and professional roles. Drawing on Ellingson’s work with crystalized approaches to qualitative research, this study layers photovoice with autoethnographic methods to produce both data and MotherScholar representations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Zoom to conduct three interactive interviews, the authors discussed their COVID-19 narratives and shared images and social media posts that represented their embodied experiences as MotherScholars. Narrative analysis of interactive transcripts and images demonstrate temporal, material, and emotional themes. Implications of this research expand and complicate constructions of the MotherScholar identity and curate a plurality of MotherScholar embodied voices in a period of time when both maternal and professional identities have a totalizing effect on women in academia.