The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology
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The Anthropocene is the term for our current geological era, during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Jane Caputi's new book examines two major "myths" of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, and uses them to devise a manifesto for the survival of nature--which includes human beings--in our current ecological crisis. The myth of Mother Earth personifies nature as a figure with the power to give life or death, and one who shares a communal destiny with all other living things. The Anthropocene myth sees humans as exceptional for exerting an implicitly sexual domination of Mother Earth through technological achievement, from the plow to synthetic biology and artificial intelligence.
"Much that we take for granted as inferior or taboo is based in a splitting apart of inherent unities: culture-nature; up-down, male-female; spirit-matter; mind-body; life-death; sacred-profane; reason-madness; human-beast; light-dark. The first is valued and the second reviled." This perspective provides the framework for any number of related injustices--sexual, racial, and ecological. Caputi resists this pattern, in part, by deliberately putting the "dirty" back into the mind, the obscene back into the sacred, and vice versa.
Jane Caputi, PhD is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She is the author of The Age of Sex Crime; Gossips, Gorgons and Crones; and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture. She has also made two educational documentaries: The Pornography of Everyday Life and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth. Jane is the winner of ASWM's Saga Award for Contributions to Women's History and Culture.
October 21 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time When the Moon and the Sun are Daughters of Mother Earth. Analysis of Basque Cosmic Reality Idoia Arana-Beobide
November 4 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time Beyond the Trees: Ecofeminism and Connections to Current Movements for Change Jeannette Kiel
November 18 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time Hieroglyphic Thinking Normandi Ellis
December 2 at Noon Eastern Standard Time The Modern Matriarchal Gift Economy Genevieve Vaughan
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. Continue reading for this Salon's Zoom Registration information.
Modern industrial agriculture is divorced from nature and culture, making it difficult for most citizens to imagine what it was like originally when the tasks of planting, growing, and harvesting were fully integrated into the daily life, spiritual practices, and economic sustainability of Neolithic and/or indigenous cultures. When people understood the soil to be alive with microorganisms and helpful living creatures like worms, and when they understood the cycle of seasons to be an expression of sacred natural law, the practice of agriculture involved profound meaning, not high yields and market value.
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"Myth comes alive as it enters the cauldron of evolution, drawing new life from storytellers who shape it." --Elizabeth Fuller, the Independent Eye Theatre
"I’ve always seen masks as "vessels for our stories". When I went to Bali to study mask arts I was privileged to produce collaborative masks with Balinese mask makers while there, and I returned inspired by their traditions of sacred Temple masks, masks that “belong to the gods”. In 1999 I was commissioned to create 30 multi-cultural masks of Goddesses for Reclaiming’s 20th annual Spiral Dance. As I researched worldwide feminine mythologies for the "Masks of the Goddess" collection, I found myself in a grand conversation that continually grew as colleagues and communities - dancers, storytellers, ritualists, psychologists and theologians, used the masks, each bringing new meaning to a universal heritage of sacred stories by “embodying” the many faces of the Goddess. The Collection travelled throughout the U.S. with many different communities and individuals for over 20 years, and is the subject of a self-published book. In 2019 the Masks of the Goddess Project was formally closed with a performance and an exhibit of the Collection at HerChurch in San Francisco." Learn more about the Masks of the Goddess Project here.
Lauren Raine. MFA, is an artist and writer known for her "Masks of the Goddess" Collection that traveled throughout the U.S. for over 20 years. In 2015 the Collection was presented at the Parliament of World Religions in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has also created the projects "Spider Woman's Hands" and "Our Lady of the Shards." She received the Alden B. Dow Creativity Center Fellowship and has been a resident artist at Henry Luce Center for the Arts Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C, Cherry Hill Seminary, and Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theater. See more of her work on her website.
"Like the Spider Woman herself, Lauren has become one with the work of her hands. It is unusual to find a talented artist who is also sublimely articulate about her inspiration, her study, and her realization." ---Sarah Gorman, THE CREATIVE SPIRIT CENTER, Midland, MI
Sept 23 at 3 pm Eastern Daylight Time Redeeming Ancient Agriculture from the Dustbin Vicki Noble
October 7 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time Call Your Mutha’: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene Jane Caputi, PhD
October 21, 2020 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time When the Moon and the Sun are Daughters of Mother Earth: Analysis of Basque Cosmic Reality Idoia Arana-Beobide
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