2026-09-23T00:52:03Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132671 2026-03-24 col_2142_5131 col_2142_8800 com_2142_5130 com_2142_5132

application/pdf en text Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2027-12-01 The student, Melanie Marshall, accepted the attached license on 2025-12-01 at 12:55. The student, Melanie Marshall, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-12-01 at 13:00. This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-12-04 at 12:00. DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22998 on 2026-02-19 at 18:46:08 Reconfiguring motherhood an autoethnography of ADHD, care, and knowing in the homeplace Marshall, Melanie Alese Kirkwood 2025-12-04 Willis, Arlette I Willis, Arlette I Neville, Helen Toliver, Stephanie Thompson McMillon, Gwendolyn Black motherhood autoethnography Black mothers with ADHD home literacy practices eng This autoethnographic study examines how receiving an adult diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) transformed the researcher’s understanding of her maternal identity as a Black mother and shifted her literacy practices to support both her and her daughter’s regulation and learning. Guided by Black Feminist Thought and Black Disability Studies, the researcher emphasizes home as a place where acts of Black maternal labor are recognized as forms of literacy. Through recursive narrative writing, these experiences are presented as storied vignettes, highlighting knowledge created through relationships rather than extracted. The stories here appear as fragments of memory, conversation, and lived experience—artifacts created through the cyclical process of writing and re-writing the self in dialogue. Interpretation is conveyed through storied vignettes written in free verse, tracing three phases of change—formation, recognition, and reconfiguration—that show how diagnostic awareness offered both language and legitimacy for longstanding patterns of care and control. Reflections reveal that intergenerational knowledge, spiritual grounding, and narrative reflexivity support maternal adaptation and advocacy, while also exposing the private, often unseen aspects of Black maternal engagement that challenge deficit-focused views of involvement within schools and parent-advocacy models. The study adds to scholarship on Black motherhood, literacy, and neurodivergence by framing maternal self-definition as a dynamic literacy practice—an act of reading, interpreting, and reauthoring oneself in relation to child, community, and system. It ends with a call for pedagogies and research methods that honor Black maternal knowledges and center neurodivergent, relational ways of knowing. 2025-12 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132671 Copyright 2025 Melanie K. Marshall Curriculum and Instruction Curriculum and Instruction University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Ph.D. Dissertation