Advisory Board

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of many books that explore women’s life passages, including Goddesses in Everywoman, Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, Goddesses in Older Women, Crones Don’t Whine and, most recently, Like a Tree.

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and comparative mythology, from UCLA.  Her first book, Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book, in which she translated texts from thirteen languages, was used for courses she taught at UCLA for a decade and a half.  She completed and supplemented the final book of Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses.  In 2012, her 2010 book, co-authored with Victor Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Sarasvati award for best nonfiction book on women and mythology.  In 2013, Miriam and Victor published a new monograph, “Sacred Display: New Findings” in the University of Pennsylvania online series, Sino-Platonic Papers.  Miriam is the author of over thirty scholarly articles and nine encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures.  She has edited and co-edited sixteen scholarly volumes.  For thirteen years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages in the department of Classics at USC.  She has lectured at the New Bulgarian University (Sophia, Bulgaria) and “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University (Iaşi, Moldavia, Romania).

Normandi Ellis’s books on Egyptian myth, ritual and magic include Imagining the World into Existence, Invoking the Scribes, Feasts of Light, and Dreams of Isis. Her book Awakening Osiris is considered a spiritual classic. She received fellowships from Kentucky Foundation for Women, YMCA Writers’ Voice, and Kentucky Arts Council, among others. She facilitates an Egyptian mystery school and leads trips to Egypt.

Annie Finch’s books include Spells: New and Selected Poems, A Poet’s Craft, and Among the Goddesses (Sarasvati Award, ASWM). Her poems have appeared onstage at Carnegie Hall and in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. As Poetry Witch, Annie collaborates on multimedia performances. She holds a Ph.D from Stanford and offers community, classes, and rituals at PoetryWitch.org.

Laura Fragua-Cota is an accomplished artist who has won numerous awards and has used her talents to help others. Laura received her Master’s degree in Art Therapy in 2005 after a long career as an artist. Through her art she has won the Governor’s Award for the State of New Mexico, participated in the Art in Embassies Program with U.S. State Department, and has had her work in shows in Russia, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Native Art. Since receiving her Master’s degree she has worked with children in her tribal community of Jemez Pueblo and has provided workshops in a number of venues including the Universidad Intercultural del Estado Mexico in San Felipe del Progresso, Mexico.

Joan Marler is the Executive Director of the Institute of Archaeomythology and is the author (with Harald Haarmann) of Introducing the Mythological Crescent (2008). Sheis the editor of The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas (1991), From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas (1997), The Journal of Archaeomythology (2005-present), The Danube Script (2008), and other publications. She is completing her doctorate in Philosophy and Religion with an emphasis in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies in SanFrancisco, where she taught as an adjunct professor for a number of years.

Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett, Ph.D. is a Healer, Teacher, Artist and Writer. She is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University in Chicago and a Licensed Psychologist in private practice. Her specialties in clinical practice include connecting to nature and animals (Equine Assisted Psychotherapy) for healing, growth and change. She has explored issues in the psychology of women including feminist approaches to methodology considering historical, political, religious contexts of interpersonal violence, the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity race and class and ecofeminism, the relationship between societal attitudes towards women, animals and nature. She has spoken internationally, nationally and published in these areas over the last decade.

Michael McDermott is a retired physician and lifelong activist.  He and his late wife Patricia Monaghan developed their home, Brigit Rest, into a retreat and garden center and host of the Black Earth Institute.  BEI unites art with spirituality, earth and social justice. He and Patricia co-edited Brigit, Sun of Womanhood and he has brought out and introduced three other of her posthumously published books. He is on the advisory committee of Cherry Hill Seminary.

Miigam’agan is a Wabanaki/Mi’kmaw grandmother of the Jagej Clan from Esgenoôpetitj/ Burnt Church also known as Atlantic Canada.  She is a mother of three wonderful people and a grandmother to four beautiful grandchildren. Her life has been devoted in rematriation of Wabanaki languages and maricultural systems. Miigam’agan is an appointed tribal subchief in her ancestral Gespegawagi Tribal Council. She also holds a position as the Elder-in-Residence at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB, a role in which she provides support for Indigenous students and offers opportunities for the students and faculty to learn from Indigenous knowledge keepers.  Miigam’agan sits on the national steering committee on Adult Education Initiatives for the Catherine Donnelly Foundation and a co-chair for the Wapna’kikewi’skwaq/Women of First Light, an Indigenous women-led organization on adult education for radical social change.

Arisika Razak, RN, MPH is the former Chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program at CIIS. For five years she co-chaired the Womanist-Pan African Section of the American Academy of Religion-Western Region, and she is a regular contributor books and journals. Her film credits include Fire Eyes, the first full length feature film by an African woman on female genital cutting; and the forthcoming Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth where she is interviewed on Alice Walker womanism.

Donna Read has been making films for almost forty years. The first half of her film career was spent at the National Film Board of Canada which produced theWomen and Spirituality Series and the second half of her career has been directing and producing videos with Starhawk for their company, Belili Productions. Their latest film, Permaculture: The Growing Edge has been distributed world-wide and presented at numerous film festivals. Read lives in Montreal, is semi-retired and loves to spend time with her five grandchildren.

Miranda Shaw, Ph.D., is the author of Buddhist Goddesses of India and Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. Her work focuses on redefining the role of women in the development of both western and eastern religious philosophy. Professor Shaw teaches in the Department of Religion at the University of Richmond.

Charlene Spretnak  is one of the founding mothers of the Women’s Spirituality movement in the United States. She is the editor of an anthology, The Politics of Women’s Spirituality (1982), and is author of several books including Lost Goddesses of Early Greece (1978), States of Grace (1991); The Resurgence of the Real (1997); Missing Mary (2004), Relational Reality (2012), and The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art (2014). She was given the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement by ASWM in 2012.

Annette Williams is chair and core faculty in the Women’s Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies.  She holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Religion with specialization in Women’s Spirituality.  Her dissertation, Our Mysterious Mothers: The Primordial Feminine Power of Àjẹ́ in the Cosmology, Mythology, and Historical Reality of the West African Yoruba, was a recipient of the 2016 ASWM Kore Award for best dissertation in women and mythology. Her research interests have centered on soul healing from sexual trauma, and the theme of women’s spiritual power and agency within the Yorùbá Ifá tradition, with specific reference to the feminine authority of àjẹ́.

Mary B. Kelly, artist, author, teacher, has done goddess research personally in many parts of the world and has illustrated and published her finds for more than 25 years. She has explored the history and symbolism of embroidery and European textile art. Her most recent book is Goddess Embroideries of the Northlands. marykellystudio.homestead.com or studiobooks.homestead.com

Lydia Ruyle, M.A., is an artist, author, scholar emerita of the Visual Arts faculty of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado where the Lydia Ruyle for Women’s Art was dedicated in 2010. Her research into sacred images of women has taken her around the globe. Ruyle creates and exhibits her art and does workshops throughout the U.S. and internationally. Her Goddess Icon Spirit Banners, which made their debut at Ephesus, Turkey in 1995, have flown in over forty countries and at many sacred sites such as Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Chartres, Kathmandu, Putuoshan, Jeju Island. Her art is in more than thirty books. Goddess Icons Spirit Banners of the Divine Feminine was published in Istanbul in 2005.