2016 Conference Schedule

We have a wonderful program of presentations this year.  

Below you will find the schedule and here 2016 ASWM Schedule PDF if you want to print it off. 

 PLEASE BE AWARE that the schedule, like life itself,  is subject to change!  

And–here are the Abstracts for those great presentations.

ASWM 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016

 7:30 am: Registration

8:30 am Room 1

Welcome and Opening

SESSION A: 9:00 am-10:15 am

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Dr. Elinor Gadon, History or Mystery: Fact of Fiction?

BREAK

SESSION B: 10:30 am -12:00 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Defiant Mothers, Rebellious Daughters: Patriarchal Family Myths and Matriarchal Mothering

1. Tamara Agha-Jaffar, Demeter, Persephone and Iambe: Three Rebels with Cause
2. Mariam Tazi-Preve, The Mother Trap
3. Molly Claire Benjamin, Magic and Fertility: The Goddess Freya as the Female Orphan Archetype

Room 2

Panel Title: Re-visioning and Hospitality in the Sacred Home of the Feminine

1. Marcella De Veaux, In Search of Home: Summoning the Goddess Ala
2. Gina Belton, The Indigenous Feminine: Fierce Receptivity in Cultivating an Ethic of Radical Hospitality
3. Toni Truesdale, Feminine Centered Dwellings as Areas of Sacred Protection

 Room 3

Panel Title: Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present Practices

Moderator: Joan Cichon

1. Heide Goettner-Abendroth via Skype, Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present New Foundation
2. Lydia Ruyle, Matriarchal Studies: A Visual, Global History
3. Cristina Biaggi, Matriarchy as Inspiration for Art
4. Kim Duckett, Being Audacious: Conceptualizing a Contemporary Goddess Women’s Community as a Matriarchal Culture

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Mama Donna Henes, Mythology, the Matriarchy, and Me “The Story of Us”
2. Alisa Starkweather, The Builder’s Daughter: Out of the land, out of the myths, comes our living work.

LUNCH & KEYNOTE– 12:15 – 1:45

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Dr. Margaret Bruchac, Pudjinskewss: Transgressive Animalities in Algonkian Indian Stories (working title)

SESSION C: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Artists, Activists, and Scientists and the Lineage of the Goddess

1. Genevieve Vaughan, The Temple of Sekhmet as Harbour and Hearth
2. Simone Clunie, The Representation of Goddess Imagery in Feminist Art
3. Nancy Vedder-Shults, Science and Divination: The Blurring Lines between the Secular and the Sacred
4. Christine Keating, Dickinson, mythopoeia, and the Akasha Paradigm

Room 2

Title: Goddesses of the Americas

(45 minutes each)

1. Anne Key and Veronica Iglesias, Fierce, and Com/Passionate and Protective: Goddesses from Central Mexico
2. Lydia Ruyle, Images and Herstories/ Goddesses of the Americas

 Room 3

Panel Title: Light in the Darkness: Locating The Goddess in Ritual Space

1. Robin Hanson, Acllacunas: Sacred Women or Virgins of the Sun
2. Jessica Bowman, The Dark Goddess
3. Mary Louise Stone, Ancient Andean Mother and Third Millenium BCE Hearths

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Kate Brunner, Becoming Branwen the Peaceweaver: A Meditative Writing Workshop for Personal Healing and Cultural Activism
2. Marie Summerwood, Chanting to Heal the Spiral Everywhere

BREAK

 SESSION D: 3:30 pm: 5:00 pm

Room 1

Panel Title: Ritual, Tradition and Feminine Intuition among the Wabanaki of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.

Room 2

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Betsy Crane, Implications of the Goddess for Gendered Sexuality: Then and Now
2. Holly Bellebuono, Women Healers of the World

 Room 3

Panel Title: Social Justice as Spiritual Choice: The Transpersonal and Transformative Goddess

1. Shirindokht Nourmanesh, The Transpersonal in Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur
2. Keisha Kogan, A Queering of the Waters in the Orisha in Santeria: Yemaya and Oshun through the Lens of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland
3. Yuria Celidwen, Tonantzin Coatlicue Guadalupe: Christian Symbolism, Colonization and Social Justice

Room 4

Film, to be announced

 BREAK

SESSION E: 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm

Room 1

Panel Title: Embracing Transgression: Women’s Spirituality and Atypical Goddess Myths

1. Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Liminality, Transgression, and Feminine Empowerment: The case of Kali and Pombagira
2. Marie Lucie Tarpent, The Animal Origins of Medusa and some other Atypical Female Deities
3. Rekha Vijayashankar, Kali’s Roar: The Rise of the Sacred Feminine as Light unto Darkness ( A Story from Indian History and Mythology)

 Room 2

Panel Title: Hearing the Call of the Ancestors through Myth, Lineage, and the Spirit of Place

1. Mary Beth Moser, Sacred Landscape: Folk Stories, Ancestral Values and the Importance of Place
2. Maryka Ives Paquette, Tracing Roots in Ancestral Lands: Remembering Through Relationship to Place
3. Marion Gail Dumont, Gateways to Submerged Histories: Biographies, Folklore and Place

Room 3

Panel Title: Male-Female Relationships in Hebrew Texts: Three Feminist Analyses

1. Judith Laura, via Skype, Gender Equity in Kabbalah?
2. Rabbi Jill Hammer, The King and the Priestess: Mythic Motifs and Motives in the Tale of Judah and Tamar
3. Judith Maeryam Wouk, Teraphim and the Role of Women

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Laura Thomae, Drumming in the Dark: Integrating Music Therapy and Traditional Healing Practices in Hospice
2. Laney Goodman, Mother Drum Ceremonial Circle

BREAK – DINNER ON YOUR OWN

SESSION F: 7:30pm – Room 1

Authors read their spiritual stories, from award winning anthology, Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality: Elders and Visionaries

Moderated by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Vicki Noble and featuring: Max Dashu, Starr Goode, Mama Donna Henes, Donna Read, Genevieve Vaughan, Cristina Biaggi, Lydia Ruyle, Miranda Shaw, Elinor Gadon, and Susun Weed

——————————————————————————————————–

 SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016

 8:30 am – Room 1

Opening and Announcements

SESSION G: 9:00 am – 10:15 am

Room 1

Panel Title: Wheels of the Goddess

1. Alexandra Cichon, Reflections on Reclaiming the Wheel of Ariadne of Bronze Age Crete
2. Joan Cichon, The Forgotten Goddesses of Ariadne’s Wheel
3. Kim Duckett, The Wheel of the Year as an Earth-Based Spiritual Psychology for Women
4. Barb Lutz, Synthesizing Goddess, Nature, Priestess, and Archeomythology: Creating Sacred Space for the Wheel of the Year

 Room 2

Panel Title: Matriarchal Matrix and Patriarchal Overlay: Three Historical Patterns

1. Constance Tippett, Archaeological Evidence of Ancient Women’s Gatherings
2. Elizabeth Kingswood, Gantowisas: The Role of Women within the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and her Influence on the Early Suffrage Movement
3. Laura Truxler, Through the Seer Stone: Cultural Landscape of Ancestral Memory and Four Generations of Early Mormon Progenitors on the Eastern Seaboard

Room 3

Panel Title: Rage, Ravages, and Rapture: Applying Goddess Wisdom to the Grieving Mother

1. Stephanie Zajchowski, Persephone’s Perception: The Paradox of Motherhood
2. Kayden Baker-McInnis, The Rich Dark of Grief: The Myths of Niobe and Demeter
3. Jaffa Frank, Objective Relatedness, Radical Empathy, and Letting Go
4. Angelina Avedano, Raging Grief and Dual Descent

Room 4

Roundtable: Native American Issues and Scholarship

BREAK

 SESSION H: 10:30 am-12:00 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Women’s Wisdom and Sacred Rites of Water

1. Mary Beth Moser, Flowing Across Time: Women, Water and the Sacred in the Italian Alps
2. Gayatri Devi and Savithri Shanker de Tourreil, Immersion: Sea and Sexuality in Goddess Myths
3. Jelka Vince Pallua, The Slavic Baba as an Aquatic Goddess

Room 2

Panel Title: Native Artists with Laura Fragua Cota

Presenters: Laura Fragua-Cota and others to be announced

Room 3

Panel Title: Goddess Myths, Nature, Wilderness and the Animal World

1. Kathryn Henderson, Deer, Women, Myth, and Spirit
2. Ingrid Kincaid, Playing by your Own Rules When the Gods Cheat: The Saga of Skadi
3. Kayden Baker-McInnis, Wilderness, Women and Soul-Making
4. Heather Kohser, Heroic Hummingbirds

Room 4

Film to be announced

 SESSION 1: 12:15 pm- 1:30 pm

Room 1

ASWM AWARDS AND NETWORKING LUNCHEON

SESSION J: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

Room 1

Panel title: By the Light and the Dark of the Moon – Lunar Knowing: The Cyclic, Dark and Regenerative Moon Nurturing Wisdom, Culture, and Research

1. Vicki Noble, Lunar Cycle Mandala and Its Cross-Cultural Evolutionary Significance
2. Demetra George, via Skype, Dark Moon Life Transitions
3. Marna Hauk, Lunar Inquiry

Room 2

Title: The Story of Niibish: Mer People of the St. Lawrence Seaway & the Great Lakes

Ann Filemyr and Tahnahga Yako Myers

Room 3

Panel Title: Women’s Spirituality, Transformative Scholarship and Personal Quest

1. Diane Jennett, Reweaving the Web: Ancestral Relationships in Research and Life
2. Kate Brunner, Rhiannon, Great Queen of the Mabinogi: Ancient Mythology in Modern Context as a Tool for Personal Healing and Social Justice Activism
3. Natasha Redina, Finding Light in Darkness: The Process of Descent from Ancient Goddesses to Present Day Women

Room 4

Workshop: April Heaslip, Reclaiming ISIS: From Traumatic Othering to Tending and Befriending

BREAK

 SESSION K: 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Room 1

Title: The Distaff: Fates, Witches, and Women’s Power

Max Dashu

Room 2

Title: The Role of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge in an Era of Global Change

Cristina Eisenberg

Room 3

 Panel Title: Sacred Lineages and the Spirit of Place

1. Barbara Daughter, Women are the Revolution: Examining the Lessons of my Motherline while Honoring the Legacy of Deborah Sampson
2. Margaret Lynn Mitchell, Seeking Sanctuary with Saint Brigid of Ireland: A Harbor of Sacred Feminine Divinity
3. Jennifer Smith, Finding the Feminine at MIT: The Great Mother Goddess under the Great Dome
4. Rain Hastings, Vinotok: Cultural Transformation through Community Ritual.

Room 4

Film and Filmmakers Roundtable

 BREAK

SESSION L: 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Women as Visionaries and Healers

Dr. Lucia Ciavola Birnbaum

BREAK—DINNER ON YOUR OWN

SESSION M: 7:30 pm

 Room 1

Special showing: Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil

A film produced/directed by Donna Carole Roberts, directed/edited by Donna Read, and narrated by Alice Walker

 The Candomblé spiritual tradition in Bahia, Brazil, a vibrant African-derived culture that evolved from slavery’s brutal past. Elder women leaders tell stories of Candomblé’s history, social challenges and triumphs, grounded in strong community, and Earth-based wisdom and practice.