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.

2022 ASWM Symposium

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

ASWM Online Symposium: Sunday, April 10, 2022

DID YOU MISS OUR SYMPOSIUM? You can now purchase recordings for the concert or the whole event–

  • Concert only/General public all recordings  here.  
  • Members sign in and get $50 discount here.  
  • Join/Renew your ASWM membership here.
  • Questions? events @ womenandmyth.  org

“The Caretaker of the Precious” by Denise Kester

SYMPOSIUM DETAILS:

Jane Goodall has pointed out 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.

With our primary focus on interconnectedness, we feature academic and artistic 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. 

Read about Denise Kester and “The Caretaker of the Precious,” the featured artwork for this event.

Posted on

Remembering the Work of Judith Anderson

This article recently came to our attention. Judith was a wonderful visionary artist  of archetypes of women and nature, who passed away in 2008. (Our thanks to Lauren Raine and Max Dashu for the reference.) The Encyclopedia of  Women in World Religions: Faith and Culture Across History says that Judith “used womb/vagina imagery explicitly as devotional work dedicated to the goddess.”

In the Dark Speech of Praise and Birth:  The Prints of Judith Anderson 

by Catherine Madsen

“Missa Gaia: This is My Body,” Judith Anderson, etching, 1988

Describing her process of printmaking, Judith said,

“The germ of the idea for a particular print develops over many months or sometimes years. Images from reading, dreams, relationships, pictures, plants and animals will gather and cluster until a beginning form for the print emerges. The main image grows and changes, often in surprising ways, during the long process of working on the plate, which may be several months. Only some time after a print is finished do I come to understand intuitively more about its origins and implications.”  (from Art of the Print website)

Here as well is artist Alicia Blaze Hunsicker’s blog post about Judith.

Posted on

“Women Make Movies” Continues Free Film Festival

In light of the coronavirus stay-at-home orders and film festival cancelltiona, Women Make Movies is extending their free film festival through May 31. This is a great opportunity to see excellent documentaries made by and about women.

Their website says, “In March, we launched the WMM Virtual Film Festival to commemorate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. However, in response to the demands and circumstances of COVID-19, we have expanded the content of the festival and extended it to run through May 31, 2020. Sign up to watch films by women at no cost! (You’ll be joining more than 5000 attendees in 89 countries — and growing!)

“The “Films, Interrupted” Series showcases films distributed by Women Make Movies that had film festival and public screenings canceled due to COVID-19. Each film will be available for a limited window and we will include filmmaker Q&As whenever possible.”

Learn more and register here.

 

Posted on

2020 Saga Award Goes to Dr. Jane Caputi

 

Dr. Jane Caputi

The Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology has selected Dr. Jane Caputi for the 2020 Saga Special Recognition Award for Contributions to Women’s History and Culture. Her vision and scholarship reach far beyond the confines of academic institutions. This award recognizes her service both to individual women and to the future that is being created by all women.

Dr. Caputi has advanced bold ideas as a feminist theorist, documentarian, and unflinching critic of popular culture. Her books, The Age of Sex Crime (1987), Gossips, Gorgons and Crones (1993), and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture (2004), have explored in depth difficult issues concerning violence against women and entrenched sexism in society.

Dr. Caputi’s work as a filmmaker has also advanced important concepts regarding violence against women, in the 2006 film, “The Pornography of Everyday Life,” and the worldwide movement of ecofeminism, in “Feed the Green: Feminist Voices of the Earth (2015).” Her forthcoming book, Call Your “Mutha”: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene, will be released in August 2020.

Past winners of the Saga Award include Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Genevieve Vaughan, Donna Read, Z Budapest, Dr. Peggy Sanday, and Dr. Arisika Razak.

See the complete Saga Award letter 2020 here and read Dr. Caputi’s  PBS interview about violence against women.