2025 Conference “Sacred Stories of the Sentient Earth” Call for Proposals

CONFERENCE CALL FOR PROPOSALS

2025  Conference, Association for the Study of Women and Mythology 

“Sacred Stories of the Sentient Earth:  Scholarship for Collaboration, Intervention, and Reciprocity“

March 27-29, 2025

Westward Look Inn, Tucson, Arizona

With the precursor of  Donna Haraway’s early work pointing out how dogs socialized people as much as we them, subsequent work that supports the same for cats, and Haraway’s  Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016), a whole new interdisciplinary literature is emerging exploring the hidden lives of plants and animals and the earth herself. To name a few: The Soul of an Octopus (Sy Montgomery), Relational Reality (Charlene Spretnak ), The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth (Zoë Schlanger), What Would Animals Say if We Asked the Right Question? (Vinciane Despret), and Finding the Mother Tree (Suzanne Simard).

Overlooking or dismissing animal, plant , and earth intelligence is rooted in the hubris of Western culture.  With rising consciousness, we turn instead to wisdom from Indigenous Cultures in conjunction with newer scientific discoveries and timeless mythologies to find inspiration and answers to our connection with every aspect of life on our planet.

Our 2025 Conference focuses on meanings and relationships among mythology, science, and culture regarding animals, the green world, the earth and her ecosystems.

With our primary focus on interconnectedness, we welcome academic and artistic presentations concerning mythological, ecological and scientific scholarship. In particular we seek work that addresses collaborations between humans and other sentient beings, foundational myths about the intelligence of nature, and scientific and cultural solutions to transgressions against the balance of nature.

Such topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Oasis: The Intersection of Hospitality, Survival, and Water in Desert Cultures
• Dialogues between Western scientific findings and indigenous science and insights
• Cautionary tales of animal guardians redressing human folly and greed
• From Drought to Plenty: Strategies for Transforming Scarcity into Abundance
• Patterns of cross-species companionship in science and contemporary fiction and arts
• Mythical Waters: Exploring the Legends and Preservation of Life-Giving Springs and Wells
• Embodying the Divine: Visual and Performing Arts Inspired by the Sacred Feminine
• The stories in the rocks: rock art, symbolism, and decolonization
• Comparative mythologies and science about pollinator-plant symbiosis
• “O Mother Sun” Exploring Female Solar Deities and gender in the cosmos”
• Mythologies and goddesses of origins, transitions, liminalities, and migration
• Myths of reciprocity and partnership among sentient beings
• Drops of Dew and Ephemeral Streams: Sacred Sites of Temporary Waters and Their Cultural Significance
• Water Wisdom: Integrating Traditional Practices with Modern Water Conservation
• New Discoveries and Ancient Wisdom: Labyrinths and Rings of Connection

2025 ASWM Call For Proposals

We especially encourage proposals from First Nations women of the Americas,  Indigenous women, internationally, and women of color.

We are accepting proposals for papers, panels, and posters. If you are proposing a poster please put “POSTER” before your title.

All proposal abstracts (no longer than 250 words) and a short (70 words or fewer) bio for each Presenter are to be submitted on this FORM.

See  complete guidelines and timelines: 2025 ASWM Call For Proposals

Check out our tips on writing proposals.

Deadline for papers, panels and posters  is December 1, 2024.