Awards – Page 3

March 26, 2020January 9, 2024

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.

March 26, 2020January 9, 2024

2020 Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts

Max Dashu and the Suppressed Histories Archives

The Association for Study of Women and Mythology Board of Directors has selected Max Dashu and the “Suppressed Histories Archives” as 2020 recipient of the Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts. The award is given in recognition of her decades of contributions as American feminist historian and artist focused on female iconography, mother-right cultures and the origins of patriarchy, along with extensive teaching, publications and cultural as well as political activism.

Max’s creation of the “Suppressed Histories Archives”, researching and documenting women’s history, makes the full spectrum of women’s history and culture visible and accessible through more than 15,000 slides and 30,000 digital images. Her work as work as a feminist art historian features pan-cultural & global inclusion of women shamans and priestesses, witches and the witch trials, folk religion and pagan European traditions, and evidence in support of egalitarian matrilineages.

Past winners of the Brigit Award include Layne Redmond, Lydia Ruyle, The We’Moon Collective and Anna Crusis Women’s Choir.

See the 2020 Brigit Award letter, and learn more about the Suppressed Histories Archives and Max’s publications and artwork.

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.

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.

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

December 24, 2018January 9, 2024

ASWM Proceedings Receive Best Books Awards

Myths Shattered and Restored and Vibrant Visions: Women, Myth and the Arts included in

100 of the Best Books in Women’s Spirituality!

The Board of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology is thrilled to announce that two of ASWM’s publications, Myths Shattered and Restored, and Vibrant Visions: Women, Myth, and the Arts (Proceedings of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, volumes 1 & 2) were honored by being included in the recent 100 of the Best Books in Women’s Spirituality awarded by the Women’s Spirituality Department of the California Institute of Integral Studies.

The 100 of the Best Books in Women’s Spirituality were announced at the Women’s Spirituality Department’s conference Women Rising: New Visions for a Post-Patriarchal World which took place at the CIIS campus in San Francisco October 12-14, 2018. The conference was held in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Spirituality Department at CIIS.

As the Department noted on their web site:

These acclaimed authors include a broad diversity of scholars and artists who are contributing to the emerging field of Women’s Spirituality in academia. . . . Our faculty and students are especially grateful to the many Women’s Spirituality authors and artists who inspire and nourish the work we do in higher education to support women’s spiritual freedoms, cultural agency, and eco-social justice around the world.

If you wish to purchase one or both of the ASWM volumes, you can do so through Amazon, or the Goddess Ink website.

Many of ASWM’s members also have their individual books honored by inclusion in this list. Our hearty congratulations go out to them all!

You can view the complete list of Best Books at: http://womenrisingconference.org/index.php/wse-book-awards/

March 29, 2018January 9, 2024

Kathy Jones Receives 2018 Demeter Award

At the 2018 Conference, the ASWM Board of Directors was pleased to present the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality to Kathy Jones, author, teacher, and creatrix of the Glastonbury Goddess Conference and the Goddess Temple of Glastonbury. The award letter reads, in part,

“As a writer, healer, teacher, Priestess of Avalon, visionary, and scholar, we recognize the important roles that you have played in restoring the divine feminine to modern culture. Your tireless work for thirty-plus years, bringing the awareness of Goddess back to the U.K., Europe, the U.S., and the world, has provided not only important original scholarship but also the creation of a vital energetic container for explorations of Goddess archetypes and practices.

“Your considerable body of written work explores the mysteries of sacred land, mythology, and healing: Soul and Shadow: Birthing Motherworld, 2017; Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 2006; In the Nature of Avalon: Goddess Pilgrimages in Glastonbury’s Sacred Landscape, 2007; The Ancient British Goddess: Goddess Myths, Legends, Sacred Sites, Present Revelation, 2001; Chiron in Labys: An Introduction to Esoteric Soul Healing, 1997; Breast Cancer: Hanging on by a Red Thread, 1998; On Finding Treasure: Mystery Plays of the Goddess, 1999; Spinning the Wheel of Ana: a Spiritual Quest to Find the Primal British Ancestors, 1994; and The Goddess in Glastonbury, 1990.

“We thank you for all of your work to restore Goddess Spirituality to a modern world much in need.”

In accepting the award, Kathy joins a select group of prior winners and foremothers: Margot Adler, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlene Spretnak, Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum.