In this interactive online event, Courtney Scott will share her project and engage the audience in conversation around the themes it raises: motherwork, love, and power.
The winner of this year’s Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award is Courtney Scott (advisor: Nicki Pombier), for “‘I Am Your Nanny’/I am [not] your [m]other”. Through film, poetry, collage, photography, and edited audio, Scott explores the experiences of career nannies working in New York City. Scott’s work fulfills the promise of oral history - to amplify the complex and full voices of those who are not typically invited to speak in public. In five beautifully-edited audio episodes, Scott tells the stories of five nannies: their own childhoods, the women who raised them, their paths into nannying, saying goodbye to children they have cared for, and their relationships with their own biological children. Courtney Scott’s reflective writing around these creative pieces is compelling, thoughtful, and deeply grounded in the work of Black feminist scholars of care work, including Patricia Hill Collins and Dorothy Roberts.
This is a project that took time to develop, in part because nannies are often precariously employed, with employers expecting discretion as part of the job. By shifting her focus from employer-employee relationships to love and motherwork, Scott found a way to honestly portray these experiences in their full complexity without putting narrators at risk. This work relied on trust, reciprocity, and affinity - Scott herself is a longtime nanny and professional careworker. Through time, love, and creativity, this moving and deeply rigorous thesis makes a significant contribution to public knowledge about care work and to oral history conversations about reciprocity and risk.
Every year since 2016, OHMA has awarded the Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award to a student whose thesis makes an important contribution to knowledge and most exemplifies the rigor, creativity, and ethical integrity that OHMA teaches its students.
To more fully acknowledge the depth and breadth of excellence in OHMA theses, we are thrilled to announce that the Brodsky family has generously decided to expand the award and extend the funding for five additional years. Starting this year we will be able to honor several students and their work.
Image Description: A collage of an image of a minimalistic, high-end interior and a pink-layered cut out image of a Black woman in an apron taking care of a white baby.
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