WomenandMyth

July 9, 2021January 9, 2024

2021 Program: Lithuanian Performers Celebrate with Us

Performances of Dance, Opera, and Contemporary Song

Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by accomplished musicians and composers. We especially want to highlight samples of Lithuanian traditional culture and contemporary performance, of which Marija Gimbutas was justifiably proud. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our “On Demand” page which is open to the public.

Our dancers are from the renowned Lithuanian Folk Dance group “Suktinis.” The director of the group is Giedrė Knieža. The group is the most popular Lithuanian folk dance group in United States, having participated in Chicago’s Thanksgiving Day parade live stage performance twice. Suktinis dancers have been representing Lithuanian culture at Science and Industry Museum events (Chicago, IL) for the last 15 years, among many other performances. We offer you their performance of “Malūnas” (windmill). It was performed at Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival XV in Baltimore.

Giedrė says of this dance, “It is amazing how all the folk dance groups come to the festival and make such a beautiful event in only two days of practice. This time there were around eight hundred dancers performing this dance. “Malūnas” symbolizes change of seasons and never-ending work in the fields in order to get bread on your family’s table. Times were hard for Lithuanians, but they found ways to enjoy and celebrate life with the help of songs and dances.”

We are pleased to include songs from internationally known Lithuanian soloist Nida Grigalaviciute, who currently resides in Chicago. Nida has performed in opera houses across Europe, Israel, and the United States. The songs are from the musical “Šnekučiai.” The first song “Tūkstančiai darbelių” tells how women have lots of jobs around the house since early morning. Women in Lithuania have been singing while working in fields, cooking, working around the house, singing with kids and for kids, as well as wedding celebrations, and so forth. The second song is called “Jau seniai šviesele” – a mother wakes up her kids since the sun has been up for quite some while. Women in Lithuania used to get up with the sun, with the songs of the birds. And again, they would wake up really early since there was always lots of work around the house and in the fields.

Agne G is a nineteen-year-old award-winning classical artist who has won multiple international performance awards, performed across the United States and Europe, appeared on television, and graced the stage of Carnegie Hall. Agne has won multiple performance awards including “The Baltic Voice” – Lithuania, “Music for Kids” – Romania, as well as “American Protégé” international competition. She has recorded 3 albums to date. Her 2018 release of “A Merry Christmas from the Heart,” produced and arranged by Kc Daugirdas, earned her the Indie Music Channel’s Awards for “Best Teen Artist” and the “Best New Teen Artist of the Year.”

Our thanks to the Lithuanian Foundation for support and to their Director of Cultural Affairs, Giedrė Knieža, for sharing these performances with us for our Symposium.

Registration for this event is now closed.

July 8, 2021January 9, 2024

2021 Program: Jazz from Simona Smirnova

Jazz and Vocal Improvisation with the Lithuanian kanklės

Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by accomplished musicians and composers. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our “On Demand” page.

Simona Smirnova is a Lithuanian born jazz vocalist, composer and kanklės player based in New York City. She’s a fixture in the New York live scene with her quartet when she’s not touring the world, including Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

Simona’s genre-bending style has a unique theatrical flavor and uncanny vocal improvisation techniques. She deftly implements chamber music, Lithuanian zither – kanklės – and folkloric chants into foundations of jazz and rock.

Simona’s latest album, Joan of Arc, for String Quartet, is an original composition written as a soundtrack for the classic Carl Dreyer silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). The album is a cinematic landscape of chamber pop, jazz and folklore.

Classically trained on the kanklės, Simona earned her BA in jazz vocals at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater. Shortly after receiving the European Touring Scholarship, she moved to the United States to study at Berklee College of Music where she earned a degree in Contemporary Composition and Production.

Our thanks to Giedrė Elekšytė-Knieža, Chair of Lithuanian American Community Cultural Affairs, for her help in connecting us with Simona’s work.

Registration for symposium recordings is now available to the public! Register here.

To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, until the end of July 2022.

July 7, 2021September 3, 2025

Opening: Our International Art Exhibition

“Wisdom Across the Ages: An International Women’s Art Exhibition”

July 7 – December 31 2021

ASWM Online Art Gallery

Association for the Study of Women and Mythology

Artemisia Gentileschi Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting

We are delighted to announce the opening of our inaugural juried exhibition in ASWM’s new online art gallery. This exhibition of works by 45 artists and filmmakers from around the world was created in concert with our 2021 online symposium, “Wisdom Across the Ages: A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas.”

Our organization was founded by women who appreciated the essential role of the arts in developing, promoting, and inspiring scholarship and research.

Patricia Monaghan was not only the author and editor of many books about goddess scholarship; she was also an internationally recognized poet. Pat’s well-crafted words continue to find their way into performances, ceremonies and women’s life passages. Sid Reger is a visual artist with a happy background in feminist theatre. She has also created and promoted festivals and arts events on local, national, and international stages.

Sid says, “We understood from the beginning that all of the arts were essential sources of inspiration and collaboration for scholarship. Many artists are scholars, and vice versa, and we were always excited to see what happens when they meet in the same room. We were guided by one simple idea: Change the images (or words or dances), and you can change the world.”

We dedicate this exhibition and the gallery itself to our beloved artist-foremothers, Mary B. Kelly and Lydia Ruyle.

Facebook Live Promo interview on 7/7/21 with Kathleen Koch and Alini Mondini:

Facebook Live Promo interview on 7/7/21 with Lyn Belisle:

The exhibition runs from July 7 to December 31 in our gallery and is open to the general public.

Join us for the symposium:

Member Registration

Non-member Registration

To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, for twelve months following the event.

July 6, 2021January 9, 2024

Vicki Noble: Current Projects

Recently we invited our advisory board members to tell us what is on their minds these days, to share their current projects, milestones, and emerging collaborations. Vicki’s report is the fourth in this series.

The Covid isolation period has allowed sustained time for research and writing, which I have appreciated enormously. I’m excited about the Primordial Goddess collaborative book project I’m involved in with Miriam Robbins Dexter (see her blog for more details) and Laura Amazzone. We started this ambitious project more than ten years ago, mainly with the idea of meeting occasionally for fun and inspiration. Our decade of feminist scholarly synergy has produced an almost-finished manuscript investigating the roots of Goddess worship in India in the Bronze Age Indus Sarasvati Valley, comparing it with the development of civilization in Old Europe (the Danube Culture), and linking the two through millennia of cultural exchange and migration across Eurasia. For images, see the Home page of my website: vickinoble.com.

I am gestating a book that tells the story of Motherpeace Tarot, the project I co-created with Karen Vogel forty years ago in Berkeley, and which was licensed in 2017 by Maria Grazia Chiuri, the first woman artistic director at Christian Dior, for a special line of clothing and accessories in one of their Cruisewear collections. Through this fateful collaboration, the matriarchal and Goddess imagery that Karen and I so lovingly embedded in our drawings of the late 1970s were taken to a whole new level by artisans and craftspersons at Dior, who turned them into elegant high fashion dresses, bags, shirts, and shoes worn by women in every cosmopolitan center in the world. I want to track the history (“herstory”) of women’s sacred imagery and textile production from nine thousand years ago through all the subsequent millennia until now, culminating in the extraordinary global feminist vision of Maria Grazia, who agreed with the premise in my 1991 book, Shakti Woman, that women (and female expression) belong at the center of culture and civilization.

I’ve also been making podcasts during the pandemic with two interesting hosts, Sean Marlon Newcombe and Dawn (“Sam”) Alden, who produce “Making Matriarchy Great Again.” They have done numerous interviews with me presenting my research on Gimbutas, Old Europe, and most recently, “The War Against the Goddess,” as well as shows featuring many other interesting guests.

July 5, 2021January 9, 2024

2021 Program: Music by Ruth Barrett

Songs in Honor of Goddesses and Amazons by Ruth Barrett

Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by a variety of accomplished musicians and composers with connections to the work of Marija Gimbutas. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our “On Demand” page.

Ruth Barrett

A foremother of feminist spirituality in the US, Ruth is the author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries, and has contributed to several other anthologies celebrating goddess spirituality. Ruth, who calls herself a “musician/priestess,” is also a songwriter and is internationally known as a mountain dulcimer recording artist and singer.

Ruth is best known for works that focus on magically themed traditional folk songs inspired by folklore, goddess mythology, celebration of women, and the spirituality innate in the natural world. Her most recent album, Once And Future Amazons (2020), incorporates African, Middle Eastern and Celtic folk rhythms in a “powerful celebration of women’s embodied mysteries, ancient sovereign goddesses, and the seasonal cycle of Mother Nature.” Learn more about Ruth at Dancing Tree.

Member Registration

Non-member Registration

To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, for twelve months following the event.