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Amanda D. Watson

Assistant Professor of Sociology
Sociology & Anthropology

Biography

Dr. Amanda D. Watson's research interests include care, labour, social reproduction, disability, climate crisis, media representation of maternal labour and identity, and feminist pedagogy. She teaches on politics of family, global problems and the culture of capitalism, and power and conflict in Canadian society. Watson is an Associate Member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. She serves on the editorial board of Gender & Society.

Current projects include Politics of Birthstrike, exploring how young adults reconcile their desires for ethical family life with resurging population control initiatives to reduce their climate footprint by having fewer children; Imagine Kin Project, investigating how young adults talk about their future relations in the context of interlocking crises; and Politics of Social Justice Parenting, new research exploring the experiences of parents of young children through pandemic closures and trends in parenting.

Education

PhD (Feminist and Gender Studies), University of Ottawa
MSW, Carleton University
BA (Sociology), University of British Columbia

Areas of Interest

Care; labour; social reproduction; affect theory; reproductive justice; disability; feminist media studies; climate anxiety; kinship

Select Publications

Book

Edited Collections

  • "Social Work, Motherhood, and Mothering: Critical Feminist Perspectives" with Diane Fierheller, Erin Kuri, May Friedman, Andrea O’Reilly, Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (2022).
  • "What is Intersectional about Intersectionality Now?" with Corinne Mason, Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, & Social Justice, 38.1 (2017).

Book Chapters

  • “The Juggling Mother” in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, 2nd Edition. Toronto, ON: Demeter Press (2021).
  • “Usually the mother: Dilation and the medical management of intersex children," with Celeste Orr in From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine. Toronto: Demeter Press (2021).
  • “Feminist Politics still needs motherhood” in Troubling Motherhood: (Re)Conceptualizing Maternity and the State in Global Politics, Past and Present and Future (181-196). Oxford: Oxford University Press (2020).
  • “We changed her nappies, we saw that she was a girl: Caster Semenya’s femininity and the power of maternal testimony” with Celeste Orr in Mothering, Mothers, and Sport: Experiences, Representations, Resistances (15-48). Toronto: Demeter Press (2018).
  • “How to get through the day with pain and sadness: An investigation of temporality and disability” with Shoshana Magnet in Disability Media Studies: Media, Popular Culture, and the Meanings of Disability (247-271)New York: New York University Press (2017).

Refereed Journal Articles

  • “Quelling anxiety as intimate work: Maternal responsibility to eliminate bad feelings emerging from precarity,” Studies in Social Justice, 10(2). Brock University: Social Justice Research Institute (2017).
  • “Of suspected cheats and ‘super-crips’: Gender, Race, and Class at the Olympic Games,” with Heather Hillsburg and Lori Chambers, Global Citizenship and Equity. (2015).
  • “The power of the first hour: Is there a transnational breastfeeding crisis?” with Corinne Mason, International Journal of Feminist Politics, Taylor & Francis Online (2015).
  • Technovisibilités et risque : politique du scanner corporel (Technovisibilities and risk: New manoeuvres with full-body scanners), with Shoshana Magnet, POLI—Politique de l’image (2015).
  • “Discipline, resistance, solace and the body,” with Christine Gervais, Religions, 5(1): 277-303. (2014).

Awards & Funding

Public Sociology

Currently Teaching

Dr. Watson's role and FASS News article on FASS modernizes online learning (Sept 2019)