Philosophy professor Dr. Angela Knobel brings both scholarship and lived experience to her work on motherhood. Becoming a mother later in life deeply changed her and helped her see a gap in how our culture talks about motherhood. Mainstream feminists often frame motherhood as a potentially unjust burden. The opposing side, by contrast, often assumes that the goodness and desirability of motherhood is already obvious to all — an assumption Knobel calls “terribly tone-deaf.” To grapple with this tension, she created Motherhood, a senior and graduate-level course blending philosophy, literature and lived experience to explore its challenges and dignity. The course drew overwhelming student interest and inspired her ongoing research, supported first by a Templeton Foundation grant and now by a fellowship at the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.