Category: Arts

ASWM’s mission extends to the influence of scholarship in Women and Mythology on the arts. These posts highlight some of our activities and members.

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2022 Sarasvati Award Goes to Judy Grahn and Nightboat Books

Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power

We are pleased to announce that Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn has won the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology’s Sarasvati Nonfiction Book Award.  The award letter to Nightboat Books, which will be read at our symposium on April 10,  reads as follows:

The clarity of Grahn’s prose, enlivened by flights of poesy, makes this a work of scholarly heft and intellectual precision a literary delight.

Grahn takes feminist, queer, and literary approaches to varied sacred narratives, eliciting the ethical vision implicit in each and restoring goddess/woman/womb to the rightful place of centrality and seat of power, whether revered or contested. The author also brings geographic, astronomical, and lexical considerations to bear on her interpretations, resulting in stunning revelations on virtually every page.

Eruptions of Inanna offers original insights on a spectrum of literary sources and associated cultural patterns. The book reveals something that generations of biblical scholars combing the Hebrew scriptures for Sumerian elements have failed to discover, namely, the profound indebtedness of the Book of Job to the hymns of Inanna in its moral premise, narrative frame, dialogic exchanges, and specific phrasing and theological formulations. Beyond this towering contribution, readers are rewarded with fresh perspectives on any material already familiar to them, such as the Gilgamesh epic, the Greek pantheon, Helen of Troy, and South Asian goddess traditions, as well as the titled Inanna. Those immersed in study of Inanna and the excellent scholarship already available will find in Eruptions of Inanna more majesty, lavish beauty, and all-encompassing power than previously envisioned as the book integrates the diverse and seemingly divergent aspects of Inanna into a cosmic whole.   

While focusing on Near Eastern and Mediterranean materials, the inclusion of South Asian examples and cases further afield (Native American, African) gives the work a global sweep. The pressing ethical concern at the heart of the book is the conflictive value system of gender-based violence and oppression that now threatens life on the planet. Drawing on sacred stories spanning millennia, the author elicits an inclusive, cooperative worldview based on earthly, celestial, and human female bodily cycles of creation, transformation, and regeneration. The book steers us toward the goal of an equitable, compassionate world of collective harmony and flourishing.

We congratulate Nightboat Books on producing a beautiful book whose design allows the lapidary prose of the brilliant author to shine on its pages.

Judy Grahn

Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist. Her works include seven books of nonfiction, two book-length poems, five poetry collections, a reader, and a novel. An early Gay activist who walked the first picket of the White House for Gay rights in 1965, she later founded Gay Women’s Liberation and the Women’s Press Collective. Her intention with writing is to replace obsolete philosophies with better ones.

See the Symposium page for more information.

REGISTER HERE FOR SYMPOSIUM:

  • General public ($160) register  here.  
  • Members sign in and register with $50 discount here.  
  • Join/Renew your ASWM membership here.
  • Questions? Ask us: symposium@womenandmyth.org
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“Songs for Sentient Beings” Honors Ukranian Women

Early 20th C. Goddess embroidery, central Ukraine. Photo: Ukrainian Museum.

We may focus on scholarship, but real life impacts all of our work, in all of our fields, reminding us that we must all stand together in the face of injustice and conflict.

Underscoring this intention, we have added a special performance to our April 9 concert.  We are grateful to renowned musicologist Nadia Tarnawsky for sharing the voices of Ukranian women folksingers and offering a beautiful lament to be debuted at our concert.

Nadia Tarnawsky, photo by Darren Stahl

Nadia Tarnawsky has been studying Eastern European singing techniques for over three decades. She spent much of 2017 and 2018 in Ukraine as a recipient of a Fulbright award.  She has taught Ukrainian village style singing in workshops for the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York city, Village Harmony in Vermont and Oregon, the Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble in San Francisco, and the Dunava Ensemble in Seattle among others. In 2011 she received a Traditional Arts Fellowship from Artist Trust and an Artist Support Residency from Jack Straw Productions. In 2002 she received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship which allowed her to travel to Ukraine to collect folk songs and folklore. She sang under the tutelage of Yevgeny Yefremov with Ensemble Hilka of New York in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine.  A recording of this repertoire was released on the Smithsonian Folkways label.

Nadia urges us all to support World Central Kitchen, which is organizing food relief for Ukrainian refugees in Poland. “Food relief is not just a meal that keeps hunger away. It’s a plate of hope. It tells you in your darkest hour that someone, somewhere, cares about you.” –Chef José Andrés

See the Symposium page for more information.

REGISTER HERE FOR SYMPOSIUM:

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Concert April 9: “Songs for All Sentient Beings”

Online Concert April 9th 7 PM Eastern Time

ASWM always makes space for visual and performing arts in our events. This year we feature five extraordinary performers whose work elaborates themes of tradition and mythic relationships with nature.

This concert is included with symposium registration but we also offer tickets just for the concert. (Ticket revenue is used to support Native American and Indigenous scholars and performers.)

 

Samara Jade

Samara Jade has been called a “modern folk troubadour, multi-instrumentalist songwriter, and a philosopholk mugician” A samara is a type of winged seed – such as those “helicopter seeds” from maple trees. Samara embodies her name by casting out healing spells through her songs, like thousands of whirling seeds on the breeze, ready to land where they are needed. A migratory songbird, Samara’s “home” has been a dance between southern Appalachia and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula for the last few years.

Hear Samara sing her Unseen song.

Pádraigín Ní Uallachain

Pádraigín Ní UallachainPádraigín Ní Uallacháin‘s life’s work has been in researching and restoring the song tradition of her native place in southeast Ulster. Singing has been the main focus of her professional career, while restoring over 40 Oriel songs back to the corpus of the Irish language song tradition that are now sung again by singers throughout Ireland. Her recent compositions have been inspired by early spirituality and Irish nature poetry), by the goddess-saint Brigid and aspects of the female keening tradition.

Pádraigín’s“Song of Light” is based on an ancient Irish invocation.

 

Melanie DeMore

Melanie DeMore is a Grammy nominated singer/composer, choral conductor, music director and vocal activist who believes in the power of voices raised together. Uniting people through music and commentary, Melanie facilitates vocal and stick pounding workshops for professional choirs, community groups as well as directing numerous choral organizations in the Bay Area. She is a charter member of Kate Munger’s Threshold Choirs and conducts song circles with an emphasis on the voice as a vessel for healing. In her own words: “A song can hold you up when there seems to be no ground beneath you.”

Sing along with Melnie’s inspiring call and response “One Foot in Front of the Other/Lead with Love.”

Grace Nono, photo by Andrew Contreras
Born and raised in the river valley of Agusan, Northeastern Mindanao, Southern Philippines, Grace Nono is an ethnomusicologist, performing artist, and cultural worker who very recently published her third book on Philippine shamans, voice, gender, and place: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760099/babaylan-sing-back/. As a singer, Grace specializes in performing prayer chants from different parts of the Philippines taught to her by mostly elderly oral singers. In addition to her music performances and scholarship, Grace, 28 years ago, founded the Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts, a non-profit organization engaged in cultural regeneration initiatives.

 

Nadia Tarnawsky, photo by Darren Stahl

We have added a special performance to our April 9 concert.  We are grateful to renowned musicologist .Nadia Tarnawsky for sharing the voices of Ukranian women folksingers and offering a beautiful lament to be debuted at our concert. Nadia has been studying Eastern European singing techniques for over three decades. She spent much of 2017 and 2018 in Ukraine as a recipient of a Fulbright award.  She has taught Ukrainian village style singing in workshops for the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York city, Village Harmony in Vermont and Oregon, the Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble in San Francisco, and the Dunava Ensemble in Seattle among others.

Nadia urges us all to support World Central Kitchen, which is organizing food relief for Ukrainian refugees in Poland. “Food relief is not just a meal that keeps hunger away. It’s a plate of hope. It tells you in your darkest hour that someone, somewhere, cares about you.” –Chef José Andrés

Hear Nadia raising the energy of this “Song of Spring.”

See the Symposium page for more information.

REGISTER HERE FOR SYMPOSIUM:

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Denise Kester’s Artwork Draws on the Dream for our 2022 Symposium

“The Caretaker of the Precious” by Denise Kester

Our thanks to Denise Kester for sharing her artwork with us for our 2022 Symposium, “Hearing the Invisible: Lessons from Sentient Beings and Inter-related Ecosystems.” Our focus is on connections and relationships among people, animals, and the green world. Denise’s monoprint “The Caretaker of the Precious” (2001) beautifully conveys the intention and spirit of our program, as does her poem that accompanies the piece:

She says it is the small things that matter.

She says it is the life force of the unseen and

the vulnerable that hold our world

together by their fragile threads.

She says these things are precious to me.

I will care for them.

 

Denise is a full-time artist in Ashland, Oregon. She is author of the book “Drawing on the Dream.” She specializes in monoprint and monotype viscosity printing, as well as drawing and painting, based in part on her dreams and intuition. Denise teaches a variety of workshops on the creative process, including printmaking, bookmaking, surface design, collage, and block printing.

She says of her work, “I draw from the dream and the dream draws from me. The stories and the art I reach for are also reaching for me. Together in partnership we create a visual story that is relevant to me and also to the global community. I explore the connection and interconnection with the universe through art and dreams.”

Check out Denise’s interview with Oregon Art Beat to see the behind-the-scenes creative process that results in her colorful images of animals and nature. And see more of her work on her website, Denise Kester: Drawing on the Dream. 

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Call for Proposals: ASWM 2022 Symposium

 

 “Hearing the Invisible: Lessons from Sentient Beings and Inter-relational Ecosystems”

Call for Proposals: ASWM Online Symposium: Sunday, April 10, 2020

“The Caretaker of the Precious,” Denise Kester (2001)

Jane Goodall has pointed out our own contemporary lesson that human global disregard for nature brought on the current pandemic, documenting that mistreatment/exploitation of sentient beings can result in an exponential crisis for the whole planet.

Our 2022 biennial Symposium focuses on meanings found in the relational reality among science, culture, and mythology in regards to animals, the green world, and ecosystems.

We especially encourage proposals from Native American/Indigenous scholars and women of color.  We welcome scholars from all fields with contributions to further expanding our understanding of our universal relatedness in the community of sentient beings.

With our primary focus on interconnectedness, we welcome academic and artistic presentations concerning ecological and scientific scholarship. In particular we seek work that addresses collaborations between humans and other sentient beings, foundational myths about earth’s response to misuse, and scientific solutions to transgressions against the balance of nature. 

Such topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Dialogues  between “Western” scientific findings and indigenous science and insights
  • Cautionary tales of animal guardians redressing human greed and over-consumption
  • Examples, in Haraway’s terms, of “staying with the trouble” of ecological devastation
  • Women’s roles in promoting justice for land, animals and climate
  • Patterns of Cross-species Companionship in Science and Contemporary Fiction and Arts
  • Our Cousins the Bears: Myths of Cross-species Relationships
  • Selkies and Crane Wives: What Shapeshifting Women can teach us
  • Goddesses and Sea Creatures: Wisdom from the Deep
  • Comparative mythologies and science about pollinator-plant symbiosis
  • Mythologies and goddesses of origins, transitions, liminalities, and migration
  • Divine interventions for healing out-of-balance human behaviors
  • Myths of reciprocity and partnership among sentient beings
  • Feminist spiritual traditions that inspire earth-centered activism

Proposal deadline: January 20, 2022

For questions, contact submissions@womenandmyth.org .

Click here to view a detailed Call for Proposals with guidelines and submission form

 

About the artwork: “The Caretaker of the Precious,” a monoprint by Denise Kester  of Drawing on the Dream (2001) beautifully conveys the intention and spirit of our program.