Saturday, March 29, 2025, 9:00 AM Pacific Time

• Judy Grahn: Inanna, Protectress of Nature’s and Women’s Cycles
• Annalisa Derr: Reclaiming Inanna: A Myth Model for Embodying Erotic Aliveness
• Pinar Durgun:  Goddess of Ambiguities: Inanna/Ishtar and her (many) images

Our plenary panel examines the many dimensions of one of the world’s oldest known mythic figures, the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna.  Her attributes include celestial powers of stars and planets,  yet she is best known for her voluntary journey into the underworld of loss and pain. This outstanding panel includes the work of three pre-eminent scholars of Inanna’s myths and images:

Annalisa Derr, PhD, offers an affirming alternative by re-visioning the Sumerian myth, “The Descent of Inanna,” as a sacred menstrual narrative and ritual rite-of-passage. Her forthcoming book, under contract with Inner Traditions, aims to help liberate women from internalized sexism and menstrual shame and (re)awaken them to their Sacred Feminine Power.  Annalisa earned her doctorate in Mythological Studies with Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and holds a BA in Theater with specialized training in masked and physical performance.  Out of a desire to enrich the lives of everyday women, Annalisa hosts “Journey to the Goddess TV,” facilitating interviews and keynote presentations by experts in goddess scholarship and spirituality. Last, but not least, she is an aspiring flamenco dancer, Italophile, and a recent resident of Athens, Greece.

Dr. Pınar Durgun is the Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen Associate Curator of Ancient Western Asian Seals and Tablets and Department Head of Ancient Western Asian Seals and Tablets Department at the Morgan Library in New York, which contains one of the most distinguished collections of Mesopotamian cylinder seals in the United States. She studied in Turkey and has a Ph.D. in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University. She is an art-historically trained archaeologist with a strong background in anthropology. Her research focuses on ancient materials and crafts, seals and sealings, death and burial, image and identity making, and copies and copying in ancient western Asia. With over ten years of experience teaching and working in museums, Dr. Durgun is interested in how museums help us engage with the past and how they can better serve our communities today.

Judy Grahn, Ph.D., has been writing about women’s spirituality and women’s contributions to human culture for over fifty years. She taught her own work in Women’s Spirituality Master’s Programs at New College of California and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology for over thirteen years total. Her work on Inanna includes Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power, for which she won the ASWM Sarasvati Award,  and three book-length poems on the goddess of love, power, and beauty.  She is also the winner of ASWM’s Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality.

Read all about our 2025 Conference and register here.

Sunday, March 30, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson AZ

Weaving a Matrix of Community Across Time: the deep history and lived expressions of the Great Goddess Tanit and her Sister Goddesses

This panel discusses the Carthaginian Tanit, Ugaritic Anat, Greek Athena (Mycenaean Greek A-ta-na), Egyptian Neith, and Sumerian Inanna as Goddesses related not only in function but also linguistically, shown in translations of texts and iconographically. Athena, a sister Goddess to Tanit, and her function of weaving, are viewed from a depth psychological view as well. Finally, Tanit is discussed as a Goddess whose images support a clothesline in a lived ritual of renewal, linking the Motherline through time.

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European Studies from UCLA. Her books include Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990); Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia (2010, with Victor Mair) (2012 ASWM Sarasvati award); and Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (2015, with Vicki Noble) (Susan Koppelman award, 2016). Miriam is the author of over thirty scholarly articles and nine encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures, and 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. For the following sixteen years, she taught courses in comparative myth at UCLA.

Safron Rossi, Ph.D., is a Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies MA/PhD program. Her areas of study include Greek mythology, archetypal psychology, astrology, and goddess traditions. For years she was Curator of the Marija Gimbutas manuscript collections at Opus Archives. Safron is author of The Kore Goddess: A Mythology & Psychology (2021), co-editor of Jung on Astrology (2017) and editor of Joseph Campbell’s Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (2013).

Mary Beth Moser, Ph.D., has traveled widely in Italy to study women’s spirituality, with a focus on women and folk wisdom in Trentino. This presentation draws from study pilgrimages to Sicily and Sardegna with Dr. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, professor emerita at CIIS, and from “The Motherline: Laundry, Lunedi, and Women’s Lineage” in She Is Everywhere, Volume 3, which Mary Beth co-edited, and whose anthology series Lucia founded.

Read all about the ASWM Conference and register  here.

Sunday, March 30, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson AZ

Day of Gifterhood,: A followup from the Global Day of Sisterhood after 2023 ASWM Conference

The Maternal Gift Economy Movement invites you to a day of gifterhood on Sunday March 30.  We will gather from 9:00 to 4:00 local time at the same venue as the ASWM conference.  Meet members of the MGEM network and enjoy the gifts of discussion, sharing and ritual.  Debrief the conference, bringing in the gifts of ideas, of stories and of song, rooted in maternal gift economy.  Join the conversation to shift the paradigm and link to a deeper understanding of nature, nurture, and the need for radical social change.  Chat about how to create an ecovillage, promote citizen science, or organize a protest, and, in general strategize Where To Go From Here.  We will close with a Gifterhood ritual. 

There is no charge for this gathering, but in order for us to spend the whole day together, the hotel will charge about $50 for lunch.  Let us know if this is an issue for you, or, on the other hand, if you are willing to provide a lunch for (an)other participant(s) as well as yourself. 

Please email to register or get more information: maternalgifteconomy@gmail.com so we know how many to expect. More details about the program and logistics will be sent to you as they are available.

Meanwhile check out MGEM Conferences and Salons here.

Read all about the ASWM Conference and register  here.

Thursday, March 27, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson AZ

Join us on a delightful tour of Mission Gardens and the multi-generation fruit harvesting site associated with the Saguaro National Park, accompanied by Tanisha Tucker, a third-generation caretaker of the Saguaro site. She will discuss plant lore, food harvesting, and other practices from the Tohono O’odham Nation perspective. 

At an early age, Tanisha was taught the tradition of the baidaj, or annual saguaro fruit harvest by her mother, Stella Tucker. Guided by the teachings of her mother, Tanisha is working to preserve traditional harvesting practices and restore native food ways. She is developing recipes with native foods, discussing their history, and hosting community tastings and classes in partnership with Tohono O’Odham Young Voices podcast.

Mission Garden, at the base of Sentinel peak, is a living agricultural museum of Sonoran Desert-adapted heritage fruit trees, traditional local heirloom crops and edible native plants. This site is Tucson’s birthplace, sacred to the Tohono O’odham, where archaeologists have documented 4,100 years of continuous cultivation. The Garden contains over a dozen distinct multi-cultural, ethno-agricultural heritage plots, each representing one of the many ethnic groups that farmed the Tucson Basin over the last four millennia. E. Director Alyce Sadongei, Megan Lopez, and other staff will share Indigenous practices (planting and harvesting by the traditional calendar) and early colonial gardens.

Then we travel to Saguaro National Park and the Food Harvest Hill site where Tanisha will discuss how saguaro, buckthorn, prickly pear, and other fruits have been processed for generations. The Tucson District on the West side of Saguaro National Park is famous for its dense saguaro forests, beautiful sunsets, and the shorter scenic loop drive (Bajada Loop). We will end our field trip at the Saguaro National Park visitor center (West side) before traveling back to the Westward Look Resort.

Cost $90:  includes box lunch, bus, and entrance and guide fees. Tips are optional. If you have a National Park Pass, please bring it for your admission to Saguaro National Park. 

Register here.

We planned this excursion to be easy walking on paved and some unpaved paths.  We will be walking short distances that can accommodate canes and walking sticks if you use them.

Please bring: March in Tucson ought to be sunny and pleasant. Still, weather can be fickle so please be sure to pack a hat, long sleeves, water, and sunblock.

Itinerary

• 11:30 AM—meet at registration and put together your box lunch
• 12:00—board the bus (with food harvester Tanisha Tucker)
• 12:15 PM—Leave Westward Look Resort
• 12:45-1 PM—Arrive at Mission Gardens—After a 10-to-15-minute overview, we will divide into small groups to look at several garden areas. Or, if there’s time, you can explore the gardens on your own.
• 2:30 PM—Leave Mission Gardens for the fruit picking site at Saguaro National Park. At the fruit processing site Tanisha Tucker and colleagues will explain some of the processing aspects. After about a half hour at the processing site, we will go to the Red Hills Visitor Center in Saguaro National Park West.
• 4:45 PM—Head back to the Westward Look Resort
• 5:30 PM—Arrive at the Westward Look Resort

Register for the Tour and/or the Shechinah Banquet here.

Read all about the Conference here.