2023 Special Appearance by Theresa Bear Fox and ‘Kontiwennenhawi’

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Songs Shared at our 2023 ASWM Awards Luncheon

Theresa Bear Fox

 Theresa Bear Fox, a Native American singer-songwriter from the Mohawk Nation, grew up on the Akwesasne reservation, located in upstate New York and Canada. Theresa  (“Bear”) has been writing and producing her songs and making singing appearances with women’ singing groups, both locally and internationally. Her travels have taken her to California, New Paltz, New York City, Newtown and the Six Nations Territories.

“Bear’ and the women of Kontiwennenhawi

When Bear gets an idea for a song, she is usually near water like a river or stream. Water has so much power and as she sits by it,  a melody will come to mind and she isn’t able to do anything else until she writes those words to that tune. “Many of my songs are medicine, and when I sing, sometimes it’s with other women in various communities,” said Bear. “I feel that women have to deal with so much in life, we carry a very heavy load all the time. My hope is that the songs give them strength and use the music to help them heal.”

Our gratitude to the Worldwide Indigenous Sciences Network for the grant support for Theresa’s appearance at the Awards Luncheon.

Hallie Iglehart Austen Receives 2023 Demeter Award for Leadership

Hallie Iglehart Austen receives 2023 Demeter Award for Leadership

See video HERE

In 2010, when ASWM held its first biennial international meeting, we established the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality as a lifetime achievement award. At this year’s conference, the recipient ie author-activist Hallie Iglehart Austen. Our letter to her reads as follows:

The 2023 Demeter Award is given in recognition of your decades of visionary scholarship as a founding mother of feminist art, culture, and spiritual practice.  We recognize your work as a teacher, bringing the message about the Goddess through conferences, workshops and writing. We also recognize your commitment to sustainable living, and your activism for the protection of marine life and the ocean. We honor your celebration of the connections among all things, and the hopeful message you bring at this time of crisis.

Your first book, Womenspirit, A Guide to Women’s Wisdom, published in 1983, grew out of your voyage of discovery, promoting the practice of meditation and the creation of a personal mythology. For your second book, The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine, you collected remarkable images and symbols of goddesses from world cultures. It has been hailed as “an exultantly female-centric text whose wisdom is universal.” First published in 1991, this beloved book has now been released in a new edition by Monkfish press.

In the 2000s you were inspired by your work with the divine feminine to focus on initiatives for the protection of oceans and sea life. In 2001 you co-founded Seaflow: Protect Our Oceans to educate people about the dangers of active sonars and other ocean noise to whales, dolphins, and all sea life. In 2010 you initiated All One Ocean: Cleaning Up the Oceans, One Beach at a Time. This work of organizing people to come together on local projects of habitat restoration sets an example of how forming grassroots initiatives can make a difference for the fate of the planet, its oceans and sea creatures.

Your work has combined your knowledge of indigenous Goddess wisdom with activism for the environment in a way that is truly inspirational. Our board and members honor you as one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time, and thank you for your scholarly, literary, healing, and cultural leadership.

The ASWM awards program was established by our co-founder, Patricia Monaghan, to advance the best work in the field of goddess studies. Previous honorees for the Demeter Award have included Margot Adler (2010), Charlene Spretnak (2012), Jean Shinoda Bolen (2014), Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum (2016), Kathy Jones (2018), and Vicki Noble and Judy Grahn (2020).

2023 Panel: Currents of Mystery: Shapeshifting, Bears, and the Crane Maiden

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

4:15-5:45 Friday May 5 (schedule subject to change)

Panel 7: Currents of Mystery: Shapeshifting, Bears, and the Crane Maiden

  • Mahealani Ahia, “Kihawahine: Shapeshifting Lives of Hawaiiʻs Reptilian Water Deity”
  • Carla Ionescu, “Water, Bears and Rites of Passage – A Walk Through the Forgotten Temple of Artemis at Brauron”
  • Brenda Peterson, “The Crane Maiden: A Love Story”

PRESENTERS

Māhealani Ahia (she/we/ʻo ia) is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi artist, scholar, activist, songcatcher, and storykeeper. Her theatre arts, writing, and performance from U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Irvine, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as well as her Masters Degree in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute empower her Indigenous feminist decolonial creations, and as editor for Hawaiʻi Review, ʻŌiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal, and Mauna Kea Syllabus Project.

Dr. Carla Ionescu focuses her work on the worship and ritual of the goddess Artemis, both in the Greek world and the Near East. She spends most of her time teaching in the field of Ancient History and Mythology and developing The Artemis Research Centre. She travels regularly to Europe and the United States as a guest lecturer, and also leads workshops and retreats in the field of Ancient Mythology and World Religions.

Brenda Peterson  Through her work as a novelist and nature writer, Brenda’s curiosity about and respect for nature radiates through her 23 books.  Her book “Crane Maiden,” illustrated by Ed Young, was created during pandemic isolation. “As Ed was playing with shadows in his collage art of paper and feathers, my crane dreams returned to haunt my midnights. We found solace in these sacred cranes and hope this story comforts all ages, keeps memories alive of those we have lost, but may find again in another world—even another form. With wings.”

2023 Panel: Seas of Inspiration: Myths and Sacred Stories for Young People

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

Registration Links and Conference information here

2023 ASWM Schedule

photo by Maysam Yabandeh

 2:15-3:45  Saturday May 6  (schedule subject to change)

Panel 11: Seas of inspiration: Myths and Sacred Stories for Young People

  • María Suárez Toro, ”Literary Creation of a Matriarchal Ancestral Character to Tell Stories”
  • Rebecca Migdal Kilicaslan, “Improvisational Puppet Theater as a Space for Alchemical Transformation of Myth”
  • Sarah Chandler, “Ancient Cisterns and Nabaten Irrigation: Water Injustice in Israel/Palestine as a Channel for Modern Jewish Spirituality”

PRESENTERS

María Suárez Toro is a PHD in Pedagogical Mediation of Holistic Paradigms, currently, a community underwater archaeology graduate, a feminist journalist, a human rights activist, an educator, a fisherwoman and scuba diver, and writer. She was born in Puerto Rico and has been a resident of San José, Costa Rica for close to 50 years. She is coordinator of a youth community diving center Ambassadors of the Sea in Costa Rica’s Southern Caribbean. She was a co-director of the Feminist International Radio Endeavor (FIRE) from 1991 to 2011, of which she is a co-founder.

Rebecca Migdal Kilicaslan, MA, MFA is an artist, performer and author working with dreams and myths. A co-founder of Book & Puppet Co., a bookstore and puppet theater in Easton, Pennsylvania, she studied Dream Tending with Steve Aizenstat, and is a doctoral candidate in Jungian Psychology and Archetypes at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Rebecca teaches visual art at East Stroudsburg University.

Sarah Chandler aka Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess) Shamirah teaches, writes and consults on a national level on issues related to Judaism, earth-based spiritual practice, the environment, mindfulness, and farming. Sarah is the founder and lead trainer of “Soft as a Rock: Public Speaking for Sensitive Souls.”

 

2023 Panel: Ethics and Eco-Justice for Land and Water

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

10:45 – 12:15  Saturday May 6  (schedule subject to change)

Panel 10:  Ethics and Eco-Justice for Land and Water

  • Margaret Ann Mendenhall, “Misuse of the Mycelial Network: Our Ecological Shadow Reflected in Star:Trek Discovery”
  • Donna Giancola, “A Biophilic Ethic: Ethical Perspectives in the Use of Sacred Stories”
  • Dilşa Deniz, “Gola Bûyêr, the myth of Grand Law: Water, eco-philosophy, femininity”

PRESENTERS

Margaret Mendenhall, PhD, resides in Long Beach, California and is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies Program. Her blog, My Daily Soul Trek, analyzes Star Trek episodes and films chronologically from a depth psychological perspective (https://mydailysoultrek.com/). Additionally, she has written, performed and produced two myth based one-woman shows, and produced and hosted the public access television series Myth Is All Around Us.

Donna M. Giancola is an associate professor of Philosophy and director of Religious Studies at Suffolk University in Boston. In addition to her latest book In the Name of the Goddess, she has co-authored, a philosophy textbook, World Ethics, and an eco-feminist novel, Her Underground. She has written numerous articles on comparative religion and philosophy, feminism and eco-feminism, and has lectured in national and international forums.

Dilşa Deniz is a socio-cultural Kurdish anthropologist and presently is visiting scholar at Harvard University Divinity School. She holds Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and published articles, book chapters as well as her monograph. Her research focuses on gender and cultural, political, and religious practices in  Kurdish Alevis. She studies Alevism as an old independent Iranian (land of Arian) religion that cannot  be considered a sect of Islam.  She is presently researching the Shâmaran as the Mother Goddess of Kurdistan, and decolonization of this Kurdish myth.