Conferences & Symposia – Page 14

April 3, 2022January 9, 2024

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 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

April 2, 2022January 9, 2024

Dr. Vandana Shiva keynote: Living with Other Sentient Beings

“Vasudhaiva Kutumkam: Living with other sentient beings as One Earth Family”

ASWM 2022 Online Symposium

Sunday, April 10 at 11:45 AM Eastern Time

Most indigenous cultures including the ecological civilisation in which I was born, see the Earth as living and see humans as members of one Earth Family interconnected through sacred bonds of diversity, mutuality, synergy, living intelligence, care and respect. A few centuries of colonialism, anthropocentrism, capitalist patriarchy and a mechanical paradigm constructed the earth as dead matter, with other beings as objects to be owned, manipulated and exterminated by a few privileged humans.

The ways of knowing our earth relatives non-violently, through care and compassion, that women and indigenous peoples have evolved over millennia, were declared “not knowing,” ignorance, superstition or heresy. 9 million people were killed as “witches” during inquisition, most of whom were women. The Monoculture of the Mechanical Militarised Mind rose to dominance. The voices of our relatives were silenced. Their intelligence and agency was denied. Biodiversity loss and species extinction are symptoms of the denial of the earth and her beings as living and sentient. Regenerating Biodiversity is restoring our humanity as earth beings related to and dependent upon other beings, caring for them with love and compassion, listening to their pain and cries, and learning from their intelligences the power of healing and regeneration.

Besides being a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor and author of numerous books, Dr. Vandana Shiva is a tireless defender of the environment. She is the founder of Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights. She is also the founder and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Intellectual property rights, biotechnology, bioethics and genetic engineering are among many fields where she has contributed intellectually and through activist campaigns. She fights for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food: “I don’t want to live in a world where five giant companies control our health and our food.”

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? Contact us.

March 29, 2022January 9, 2024

“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 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:

General public ($160) register here.
Members sign in and register with $50 discount here.
Join/Renew your ASWM membership here.
Questions? Contact us.

March 26, 2022January 9, 2024

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 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 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 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.”

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.

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.

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

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? Contact us.

March 24, 2022January 9, 2024

“Hearing the Invisible” ~ Our Presenters (Session 2)

Symposium Panels, April 10th at 3:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Panel 3 “Other ways of knowing and relating: Animal-Plant-Divine”

Panel 4 “Restoring Right Relationships with Sentient Beings”

See the 2022 Symposium page for registration and event information.

Choose from between these panels on the event site. Remember–all recordings will be available for attendees for 1 year following the event, so you don’t have to worry about missing anything!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Panel 3 “Other ways of knowing and relating: Animal-Plant-Divine”

Monica Mody: “When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-dual Matrix”

Monica Mody is a writer, poet, and trans-disciplinary feminist scholar from India. Her doctoral dissertation, “Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-secular South Asian Borderlands,” was awarded ASWM’s 2020 Kore Award for best dissertation.

Emma Dymock: “The Living Cauldron: Transformative Landscapes in Celtic Mythology”

Emma Dymock teaches classes in Celtic Civilization and Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She has published books and articles on Celtic poetry, prose, and drama, and edited collections of poetry and academic essays in the field of Gaelic and Scottish studies.

Barbara Crescimanno: “Siciliian Nymphs. Animal, Human, Divine Creatures”

Barbara Crescimanno is a singer, percussionist and dancer, and researcher of practices of the sacred feminine in Sicily. She is founder and coordinator of the anthropological and ethnocoreutical research group TrizziRiDonna with whom she conducted research on the female repertoire of traditional songs in Sicily.

Reagan Wytsalucy: “The Land Still Bears Fruit: Restoring the Navajo Peach through Strengthened Community Traditions”

Reagan Wytsalucy, who holds a Master’s Degree in Plant Science, is an Assistant Professor at Utah State University Extension. She is currently working with community gardens in the Four Corners region to re-establish ancient food sources for Native communities.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Panel 4 “Restoring Right Relationships with Sentient Beings”

Brenda Peterson: “Silkies in Myth and on the Beach”

Brenda Peterson is author of award-winning books including Wolf Nation and I Want To Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth. She is the co-founder of Seal Sitters, a citizen naturalist group that, as part of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, does conservation and field work to protect and educate about marine animals.

Melissa Rosati:”The Horse: A Gallop through its Creation Myths and Agency as Visionary, Warrior, Savior, and Healer in Human Relationships”

Melissa Rosati, a horse enthusiast and former semi-professional barrel racer, is Creative Director at EcoCulture Productions LLC, in New York City. Previously, She served as editorial director of McGraw-Hill International. She has served on the boards of the International Women’s Writing Guild and The Women’s National Book Association.

Andrea Fleckinger: “Frau Holle: In the Footsteps of the Great Goddess: Recalling Europe’s Indigenous Roots”

Andrea Fleckinger is a sociologist, social worker, lecturer on Modern Matriarchal Studies, and founder of the MatriForum, which aims to encourage constructive dialogue regarding egalitarian forms of society supported by findings from matriarchal research, sociology and political science.

Judy Grahn: “Insects in Our Everyday Lives”

Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, writer, and cultural theorist, whose works include Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World, Another Mother Tongue, and Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender and Erotic Power. She has written about interactions with insects and others in her latest book,Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living in a Sentient World.