2025 Conference Panel: Close to the Ground: Reclaiming Our Relationship with Reptiles & Amphibians

Saturday March 29, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson AZ

Close to the Ground: Reclaiming Our Relationships with Reptiles & Amphibians

There are innumerable examples of stories in which humans and reptiles or amphibians have complex and ambivalent relationships. But are these primarily modern interpretations obscuring the real and beneficial attributes of these remarkable animals?

• Regenerating stories and women’s connection with the earth through a survey of art featuring the snake and its symbolism, Kristen Calvert
• The Serpent-Guardian of Watery Paradox: The Sonoran Desert Legend of La Corúa, Cheryl De Ciantis
• The White Snake 白蛇傅, Jaclyn Kalkhurst
• Ancient Liminality in Egyptian Frog Symbolism, Kira Kull

Kristen Calvert has a M.A. in Art History and a M.A. in Women’s Spirituality. She is a certified practitioner in Rosen Method Bodywork, a somatic method that engages emotions and body tension simultaneously. She is also a certified Sound Healing Practitioner. She offers these holistic healing modalities under her business name BlueGreen Harmony. She also likes to do nature and spirituality-based art with her photography, music and flower feather jewelry.

Cheryl De Ciantis. Artist, mythologist, educator, organizational learning specialist and values-based dialogue mentor, Cheryl seeks to discern and illuminate the connecting threads between images, stories and lived experience to gain insights from the archetypal energies that continually re-manifest through our individual and collective lives. By training she is an art historian and historiographer and holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies with Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She resides in Tucson.

Born in Hong Kong to an American father and Chinese mother, Jaclyn Ke Yin Kalkhurst grew up immersed in Chinese myths, sparking her passion for storytelling and symbolism. She recently earned a Master’s in Mythology and Depth Psychology, presenting on the Chinese Underworld at Mythologium 2024. Now a PhD candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute, she focuses her dissertation on creation myths from the Middle East and Asia.

Kira Kull (they/them) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Mythological Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute with specialization in Intersex Studies and Decolonial Theory. They serve as a Senior Editor of the Mythological Studies Journal (2023, 2024) and currently live in Los Angeles where they work as a Myth Specialist, Queer Consultant, and line dance instructor. More info at www.kirakull.com & @kkmiracle on Instagram.

Read all about the ASWM Conference and register  here.