ABSTRACT
Cup of tea in hand, and eager to delve into something other than my own writing, I picked up Molly Quinn’s chapter, “‘No Room in the Inn’? The Question of Hospitality in the Post(Partum)-Labors of Curriculum Studies.” The title piqued my interest: hospitality, hmm, we never discuss that topic, this should be interesting. As I read I encountered more words (and related ideas) seldom appearing in academic writing—love, laughter, pleasure, joy. I also encountered an invitational style; Molly was asking me, and others in curriculum studies and the field of education, to join in her exploration of the personal meaning she finds in hospitality, how it represents (or does not represent) her labors in the field, and how deconstruction of the term illuminates not merely her personal circumstances, or my own, but also the overall human condition. After more tea, more reading, and more thinking, I felt that Molly had beautifully articulated key educational issues and raised key educational questions with her discussion of the myriad, and often ambiguous, meanings of the concept of hospitality. I also found myself asking why the concept of hospitality is so foreign and other to us, so seldom discussed, and what it might look like in our work. I questioned, as does Molly, Why is the notion of hospitality so radically other in our own work?
