2025 Kore Award Announcement and Application

Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology 2025

The Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology is conferred by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. The award, established in 2009, is funded by the gift of a generous contributor and carries a $500 prize. The intention behind its founding is to create awareness of excellence in Women and Mythology, and to provide an organizational framework for supporting graduate students in their work. The award is presented at the biennial international conference, for dissertations completed and defended in 2022- 2024. Defense must be completed by December 31, 2024.

Applicants can be from any discipline, including but not limited to literature, religious studies, art or art history, classics, anthropology, and communications. Creative dissertations must include significant analysis of mythology in addition to creative work. Applicants must be members of ASWM at time of submission.

Past winners of this award include Dr. Dawn Work-MaKinne (2010), Deity in Sisterhood: The Collective Female Sacred in Germanic Europe, Dr. Shannan Palma (2012), Tales as Old as Time: Myth, Gender and the Fairy Tale in Popular Culture, Dr. Mary Beth Moser (2014), The Everyday Spirituality of Women in the Italian Alps, Dr. Annette Williams (2016), Our Mysterious Mothers: The Primordial Feminine Power of Àjê in the Cosmology, Mythology, and Historical Reality of the West African Yoruba, and Dr. April Heaslip (2018), Regenerating Magdalene: Psyche’s Quest for the Archetypal Bride, and Dr. Monica Mody, (2020), Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-Secular South Asian Borderlands.

See these winning dissertations here.

Applicants must be members of ASWM upon submission of entry. A letter of support from the dissertation chair/director must accompany the application. Applicants will be urged to also propose a paper for the national conference, and to appear at and present work at the national conference, if they receive the award. Conference fees will be waived and housing and meals will be covered by ASWM for the winner.

Schedule for 2025 award:

Dissertations completed and defended in 2022-2024
Application window: Sept. 16, 2024-January 17, 2025
Deadline for completion and defense: December 31, 2024
Announcement of award winner: February 14, 2025
Awarded at conference Saturday March 29, 2025 , Tucson AZ

Application for Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology

Name:

Mailing address:

Email:

Field of Study:

Title of Dissertation:

Date of defense:

Institution degree granted by:

Dissertation advisor’s name:

Dissertation abstract:

Please submit this form via email to awards@womenandmyth.org, with PDF (preferred) or MSWord attachment of dissertation. Please have your dissertation director email a letter of support, also in PDF or MSWord, to the same address.

Kore: ASWM’s Award Winning Dissertations

The Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology is conferred by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. The award, established in 2009, is funded by the gift of a generous contributor. The intention behind its founding is to create awareness of excellence in Women and Mythology, and to provide an organizational framework for supporting graduate students in their work. The award is presented at our biennial international conference.

We are proud to provide access to this groundbreaking scholarship!

Dr. Dawn Work-MaKinne (2010), “Deity in Sisterhood: The Collective Female Sacred in Germanic Europe” Work-MaKinne Dissertation

Dr. Shannan Palma (2012), “Tales as Old as Time: Myth, Gender and the Fairy Tale in Popular Culture” Palma dissertation

Dr. Mary Beth Moser (2014), “The Everyday Spirituality of Women in the Italian Alps: A Trentino American Woman’s Search for Spiritual Agency, Folk Wisdom, and Ancestral Values” Moser dissertation

Dr. Annette Williams (2016), “Our Mysterious Mothers: The Primordial Feminine Power of Àjê in the Cosmology, Mythology, and Historical Reality of the West African Yoruba” Williams dissertation

Dr. April Heaslip (2018), “Regenerating Magdalene: Psyche’s Quest for the Archetypal Bride” Heaslip dissertation

Dr. Monica Mody (2020) “Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-Secular South Asian Borderlands”

March 26, 2020January 9, 2024

2020 Kore Award for Best Dissertation

in Women and Mythology

Dr. Monica Mody is the winner of our 2020 Kore Award for Best Dissertation, for her work Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-Secular South Asian Borderlands: A Critical Hermeneutics and Autohistoria/Teoría for Decolonial Feminist Consciousness.

The award was granted at our 2020 Conference in New Mexico. Dr. Dawn Work-MaKinne, Chair of the Kore Committee, says in her letter to Dr. Mody:

The ASWM 2020 Kore Award Committee is proud and honored to name you the winner of the 2020 Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology. Your dissertation, “Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-Secular South Asian Borderlands” is especially recognized for its daring work in methodology, vision and scope. The importance of decolonization in scholarship is vital, and your bringing that to the foreground is both bold and necessary. As a reader, I felt challenged and opened by the work, and wanted to apply what I was learning to my own scholarship. Your beautiful writing is a joy to read.

Dr. Mody leads a Scholar Salon, “Feminism on the Borderlands: Reclaiming Our Relationships with Modernity, Secularization, and Our Shadow Spaces.” in the member-only section of our website.

September 17, 2019January 9, 2024

Kore Award for Best Dissertation: Applications Open

Applications are open until January 17, 2020 for The 2020 Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology.

The Kore Award is conferred by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. The award, established in 2009, is funded by the gift of a generous contributor and carries a $500 prize. The intention behind its founding is to create awareness of excellence in Women and Mythology, and to provide an organizational framework for supporting graduate students in their work. The award is presented at the biennial national conference, for dissertations completed and defended in 2019 and 2018. Defense must be completed by December 31, 2019.

Past winners of this award include Dr. Dawn Work-MaKinne (2010), Deity in Sisterhood: The Collective Female Sacred in Germanic Europe, Dr. Shannan Palma (2012), Tales as Old as Time: Myth, Gender and the Fairy Tale in Popular Culture, Dr. Mary Beth Moser (2014), The Everyday Spirituality of Women in the Italian Alps, Dr. Annette Williams (2016), Our Mysterious Mothers: The Primordial Feminine Power of Àjê in the Cosmology, Mythology, and Historical Reality of the West African Yoruba, and Dr. April Heaslip (2018), Regenerating Magdalene: Psyche’s Quest for the Archetypal Bride.

Applicants must be members of ASWM upon submission of entry. A letter of support from dissertation chair/director must accompany application. Applicants will be urged to also propose a paper for the national conference, and to appear at and present work at national conference, if they receive award. Housing and meals will be covered by the ASWM Board of Directors. Information about the national conference can be found at www.womenandmyth.org

Schedule for 2020 award:

Dissertations completed and defended in 2018 and 2019
Deadline for completion and defense: December 31, 2019
Application window: Sept. 16, 2019-January 17, 2020
Announcement of award winner: February 14, 2020
Awarded at conference Saturday March 14, 2020, Albuquerque, NM

Application for Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology

February 14, 2018January 9, 2024

Announcing 2018 Kore Award for Best Dissertation

The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology 2018 Kore Award Committee is pleased to announce the following honorees:

The 2018 Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology has been awarded to Dr. April Heaslip of Pacifica Graduate Institute, for “Regenerating Magdalene: Psyche’s Quest for the Archetypal Bride.”
The 2018 Dissertation of Merit is awarded to Dr. Elizabeth Wolterink of Pacifica Graduate Institute, for “Cloaked in Darkness: Feminine Katabasis in Myth and Culture.”

Dr. April Heaslip’s work focuses on the capacity of feminist mythology as cultural and psychological change agent embodied in the lost and degraded archetypal Bride, Mary Magdalene. As a Middle Eastern woman embedded within a complex web of gendered religious “history” and mythology, she is also located within a dynamic and enigmatic mystery linking ancient Mediterranean goddesses, including Inanna, Isis, and Ariadne, with a partnership lineage relevant for our times. The void created by this lost and misrepresented archetypal feminine as a sovereign and powerful presence has left Western cultures with a corrupt, wounded, and incomplete masculinist paradigm longing for wholeness. Utilizing literary and film studies, Jungian psychology, feminist studies, archaeomythology, and religious studies to examine the cultural and personal phenomenon of Magdalenian renewal, this study explores how remythologizing bridal regeneration—as well as remapping the neglected Wasteland landscape—revitalizes the relationship between psyche, culture, and Nature.

Dr. Heaslip will discuss her work at our Las Vegas Conference, on the Friday panel LIVING MYTHS: REVIVING FEMININE IMMANENCE

Dr. Elizabeth Wolterink’s study of feminine katabasis asserts that myths of the journey to the underworld in which the protagonist is female have been marginalized in favor of stories in which the descender is male. Female figures on the journey, also called the nekyia, act in significantly different ways than their male counterparts and stories of feminine descent commonly result in the protagonist remaining in the underworld. Analyses of the nekyia of Ereshkigal, Hel, Izanami, Hine-nui-te-po, Inanna, and Persephone show that female descent narratives are as wide-spread as those of males and illuminate the differences between feminine descent and the traditionally accepted pattern of katabasis. The study finds that these female figures, far from being “defeated” by the underworld, cloak themselves in its power and come to abide there, making it their home.

The honorees will be awarded at the 2018 ASWM Conference in Las Vegas, March 16-17, 2018. Please join us in congratulating these fine scholars and in celebrating emerging scholarship in Women and Mythology.

The 2018 Kore Award Committee

Dr. Dawn Work-MaKinne, Chair