Category: 2020 Conference

The ASWM 2020 Conference held at Santa Ana Pueblo, near Albuquerque, New Mexico

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Announcing Volume 3 of Proceedings

 

The Land Remembers Us:

Women, Myth, and Nature

 

Volume 3 of Proceedings of the Association for the Study of

Women and Mythology

Edited by Mary Jo Neitz and Sid Reger

We launched Volume 3 of our conference proceedings on Saturday, March 14, during our biennial ASWM Conference. In this collection, the works of 18 scholars explore many connections of myth, land, and women’s lives, including wildness, prehistoric art and archaeology, and contemporary goddess traditions.

“This luminous volume is filled with myth and story tied to the land and Her deepest embedded wisdom and mysteries”. —Dr. Cristina Eisenberg, The Wolf’s Tooth and The Carnivore Way 

“From the earliest awakenings of the Women’s Spirituality movement, our yearning to know about women’s sacred engagements with nature through the ages was inherent. This collection of insightful articles brings so much to fruition — with concepts such as Gaian epistemology, language of animacy, women’s weaving as sacred transformations with nature, and much more. It enlarges the scholarship of cultural history by way of laying out a grand banquet.”  —Charlene Spretnak,  Lost Goddesses of Early Greece
                                                            

“The Land Remembers Us is a valuable contribution to the literature of place, the earth and the sacred.” —Michael McDermott M.D., co-founder with Patricia Monaghan and director of the Black Earth Institute

“This collection of essays contains some poignant explanations of the multifold ways our spirits can connect to the intelligences of the land, the plants, the animals, the cells, and to the spiritual energies on our wonderfully diverse planet.” —Miriam Robbins Dexter, Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book 

The Land Remembers Us may be purchased from Goddess Ink and other online booksellers.

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Pre-Conference Tour of Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

Photo by Kip Malone

Thursday March 12- 5pm

Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Tour and Dinner

Price $71 per person

We have added a special pre-conference event for those attending our conference. Join us for a private tour with docent and dinner at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, https://www.indianpueblo.org Price includes round trip transportation from Tamaya Resort to the Center in Albuquerque, museum admission, private tour with a docent and catered buffet dinner, with meat, vegetarian and vegan options. Shuttle leaves Tamaya Resort at 5:15 pm and departs the Cutural Center at 8:15pm, for a 9pm return to the Tamaya Resort.

It is required that all participants register and pay in advance, as the meal will be catered. To register, send $71 via PayPal from the ASWM donation page, https://womenandmyth.org/donation/ with “TOUR” in the “use my donation for” section. This tour is limited to 30 people. Reservations are required and will be accepted until the shuttle is full.

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At our 2020 Conference: Jane Caputi and “Feed the Green,” Film on Ecofeminism

Jane’s presentation will be Skyped into the conference.

Feminist social critic Jane Caputi is Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University.  In 2016, she was named as Eminent Scholar of the Year by the Popular Culture Association.  She has written three books, The Age of Sex Crime (1987), Gossips, Gorgons and Crones (1993), and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture (2004), and collaborated with Mary Daly on Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (1987).

She also has made two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Life (2006, Berkeley Media) and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth (2015, Women Make Movies).

Her new book, Call Your “Mutha’” A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene, is being published by Oxford University Press in August 2020, in a series on “Heretical Thinking” edited by Ruth O’Brien.

About Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth

Feed The Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth was inspired by one of the most powerful dreams that ever came to Jane, giving her the phrase “Feed the Green”: “We do this in multiple ways – material, intellectual, spiritual, emotional – listening to and responding to the call of the Green, always returning energy to the Source.”

Feed the Green features a variety of feminist thinkers, including ecological and social justice advocates Vandana Shiva, Starhawk and Andrea Smith, ecosexual activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens; ecofeminist theorist and disability rights activist Ynestra King, poet Camille Dungy, scholars and bloggers Janell Hobson and Jill Schneiderman and grass roots activist La Loba Loca. “ßTheir voices are powerfully juxtaposed with images from popular culture, including advertising, myth, art, and the news, pointing to the ways that an environmentally destructive worldview is embedded in popular discourses, both contemporary and historical.”–Container.

Jane says, “We think we’re doing it all. But the animals are doing the real work of holding it all together, and keeping us on our path. As are the plants. It’s as if we think the stars and sun and moon and the earth itself aren’t doing any work.”

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Wendy Rule to Perform at 2020 Conference

We are pleased to announce that internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter Wendy Rule will perform on Friday evening of our 2020 conference. 

“Hearing her perform live is an incredible experience that can easily be described as atmospheric, bewitching, and Otherworldly.”--Kelden Mercury

Wendy Rule, photo by Karen Kuehn

With the release of her latest double album ‘Persephone’,  Wendy’s work  continues to defy categorization. This exciting  project is  “a beautifully evocative retelling of the Ancient Greek myth of the Goddess Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and the ensuing grief of her mother Demeter, the Goddess of the Grain.”

Since her first album Zero was released in 1996, this visionary songstress has combined elements of gothic, folk, world, ambient and cabaret music, and crossed over into Pagan and New Age categories with her many mythological, esoteric, and ritual references. Renowned for her extraordinary voice and live shows that blur the line between music, ritual and theatre, Wendy has gained a loyal following in Australia, the USA, Europe and the UK. From the most intimate solo house concerts to large festival gigs, Wendy takes her audience on an otherworldly journey of depth and passion.

In 2014 Wendy relocated from her hometown of Melbourne, Australia to the USA, and is now living in the beautiful High Desert city of Santa Fe, New Mexico – allowing her an even stronger connection to her ever growing US fanbase, and providing daily access to the wild Nature that inspires her unique and transformational work. 

“I follow a very eclectic, improvisational, ever-changing Magical path, focused on Nature and her cycles. I honour the Light and the Dark in equal measure. I’m in love with the Moon, and have honoured every Dark and Full Moon for decades.”

Learn more at  www.wendyrule.com  Or join her Patreon site to hear special monthly concerts based on the astrological sign of the full moon .

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Conference Keynote by Navajo Poet Laureate Luci Tapahonso

Luci Tapahonso is Professor Emerita of English Literature (University of New Mexico 2016) and served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation (2013-2015). She is also the recipient of a 2018 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Artist Fellowship.

Tapahonso is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry including A Radiant Curve. She recently served as a judge for Poetry Out Loud, the New Mexico High School Poetry Competition and was selected as “2016 Best of the City- Our City and State’s Prolific Authors,” by Albuquerque the Magazine. Professor Tapahonso has delivered keynote addresses at several conferences and institutions including Harvard, Gallup Central High School, Kenyon College, Institute of American Indian Arts, the Tbisili International Literature Festival in the Republic of Georgia and “Creativity Week” at the University of New Zealand at Auckland and Wellington.

She recently completed a script for an exhibition called “Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art” for the American Heritage Gallery at Walt Disney World’s Epcot. Her work is included in the exhibition currently touring the country: “Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists at the Minneapolis Institute of Art,” as well as the podcasts “The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith” and forthcoming on “In Sickness and Health” with Dr. Celine Grounder.

Luci Tapahonso lives in Santa Fe with her husband, Dr. Robert Martin, who is president of the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Featured Photo by Juliana Lightle