Category: Conferences & Symposia

Grief is a universal human condition, frequently dismissed or avoided in modern culture. Yet, when confronted, grief can lead to wisdom and strength. In the spirit of shamanic scholarship, this panel explores the passage through sacred suffering, a shared human and divine experience that fosters intimate compassion and hope as safe harbor in turbulent waters. From the wellspring of emotion where mothers’ tears gather, wisdom is drawn. The rapture of an embodied, wholehearted encounter with grief is captured in ritual, re-imagination, and remembering.

Stephanie Zajchowski:

Birthing my sons was the beginning and end of me. As I poured all that I was into the child within my arms, the light of new life intertwined with the darkness of postpartum depression. Maternity, for me, was an erasure, the shattering of an empty vessel, an utter loss of self. In my search for understanding, mythology allowed me to integrate these experiences, ultimately containing the “mother” without letting her consume me.

Jaffa Frank:

For me, motherhood and loss are as inextricably linked as motherhood and joy. My first pregnancy ended in the stillbirths of my twin sons and my own near death due to complications of endometriosis. My life—the mothering of my living children, service to the dying and bereaved through hospice, therapeutic work, and doctoral work—are dedicated to making space for the truth of loss as inherent to and formative of a life of joy.

Angelina Avedano:

Mothering three sons for thirty years, I’ve learned that grieving is natural and necessary. The cycles of loss associated with my son’s schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have become a part of the rhythm of my life. As I tread the path of the grieving mother, I am not defined by grief; I am however, forever changed. This ongoing spiral brings unexpected connections, deeper wisdom, and an awareness that I can truly embrace joy and sorrow.

Kayden Baker-McInnis:

After losing my toddler in a car accident, I still grieve thirty years later. That tragedy continues to mold me. The thawing of my grief brings me to a fierce compassion and curiosity for how sorrow informs the soul. I find engaging mythic story a way through these dark passages. When I finally brought my grief to the Utah desert canyons, nature responded. Today, mothering the soul is at the heart of everything I do.

Betsy Crane

Betsy Crane leads workshops that are interactive and enlightening.  She is Professor, Center for Human Sexuality Studies, Widener University, Chester, PA. She was Director of Graduate Programs in Human Sexuality at Widener from 2007-2012.  Previously she worked for 17 years as a sexuality educator, first as a public health family planning outreach worker, then as Education Director and later Executive Director for Planned Parenthood in Ithaca, NY. She is co-editor of Sexual Lives: A Reader on the Theories and Realities of Human Sexualities (Heasley & Crane, McGraw-Hill, 2003). Her research interests include history of gendered sexuality and shifting gender and sexual identities.

Designated as Distinguished University Professor, 2014-17 by Widener University for outstanding teaching, scholarship, and service, she is past president of the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and of the Eastern Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

Today’s gender norms emerged from the last 7,000 to 10,000 years of patriarchal social arrangements that legitimated sexual and physical violence against women and subverted women’s ability to support themselves without men. But what about the time before gender relations pivoted so heavily toward male dominance? Based on the work of goddess history scholars, e.g. Eisler & Gimbutas, participants in this workshop will experience a trip to a “pre-history” where our ancestors conceptualized the supreme power in the universe as a female.

During this time girls would have seen their bodies and social roles in relation to a creative, powerful, and deeply mystical feminine creator. Boys saw themselves in terms of the ‘horned god,’ a passionate and embodied force of nature who was lover and ally to the goddess. What might all this mean for us today? Join the conversation.

Betsy’s 2016 conference workshop is Implications of the Goddess for Gendered Sexuality: Then and Now

 

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Professor Emerita, Women’s Spirituality, CIIS, joins ASWM’s 2016 conference to deliver Saturday’s keynote address, “Women as Visionaries and Healers.”

Known to her students as LuLu Nanna (grandma) and Strega Nonna (witch grandmother), Lucia’s groundbreaking research in Black Madonnas: Feminism, Religion, and Politics in Italy was followed by She is Everywhere: Anthology of Writings in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality, edited with Annette Williams, Karen Villanueva, and The Future has an Ancient Heart: Caring, Sharing, Healing from the African Mediterranean to Occupy Everywhere.

“In a time of unprecedented peril (global heating, perpetual war, nuclear danger, moral disarray) I am a great grandmother who can not afford to be hopeless.”

“ My research, books, and life suggest that even when there is no evidence for hope, there may be possibilities we can not see. These possibilities are related to every human’s origin in Africa—we are all ultimately sisters and brothers, a legacy of human migrations after 60,000 BCE to all continents out of Africa—caring, sharing, healing—otherwise we would not have survived to now. A kaleidoscopic dance of our genes in loving encounters creating a highly multicultural world in an open-ended universe.”

Lucia is dedicating her offerings this year to ASWM sister scholar, artist, and dear friend, Lydia Ruyle, who is, today, critically ill.

Citing Lydia’s inspiration, Lucia explains, “Lydia has been significant in my life, personally and professionally. She helped me through the searing time when I was unable to present to the ASWM 2012 conference because my husband Wally was dying. In my conflict with my publisher over the cover of The Future Has an Ancient Heart, Lydia saved the book with her banner of Cybele, African and West Asian dark mother for the front cover. Recently she honored me by dedicating her banner, La Befana, to me, depicting me as witch grandmother (strega nonna) who brings gifts to all children, whether they’re naughty or nice. She called her banners, “my girls,” suggesting the reflexive nurturing she conveyed in the banners she painted and sewed. And showed all over the world, touching thousands, if not millions of women while conveying her early aphorism, “Better Homes and Goddesses”. . . in all the wonderful diversity of the world’s women and their homes.”

All of us in ASWM share in Lucia’s love and concern for Lydia, who is a dear mentor and friend to many of us on the board.

The Friday networking luncheon features an opportunity for conversation with Lucia at her table: “Strega Nonna – Witch Grandmother.”

Additionally, Lucia will present at our sister gathering, the Matriarchal Studies Day, on Thursday night, March 31: Modern Matriarchies, where she is the keynote and closing speaker, discussing her newest manuscript, “Black Bird and a Pear Tree.”

The Story of Niibish with Ann Megisikwe Filemyr and Tahnahga Yako Myers

 

The Story of Niibish will be told, an ancestral tale of the long-ago handed down through the Oral Tradition of the Anishinaabeg peoples. Ann Megisikwe and Tahnahga both carry this story as part of their role as lineage carriers of the late Keewydinoquay, an Anishinaabe mashkikikwe (Ojibwe herbal medicine woman).

This traditional story carries medicine to help wound the ruptures that can befall families, communities, and nations when division is based on difference and a lack of understanding ensues. It is a sacred story that reminds us of our fundamental interconnection and interdependence on each other and on water and all that lives, grows and flourishes in the waters, fresh or saltwater.

This story helps us recall our fundamental kinship with the other-than-human realms and reminds us that we are all related despite the appearance of surface differences. It helps us reach back into our own ancestral memories to recall the stories in most coastal cultures regarding the finned people. Perhaps they are half human and half fish, but weren’t we all underwater beings conceived in the watery womb of our mother’s bodies? Are Mer stories also tales of our earliest form of becoming? Are they persistent memories that continue to fascinate and intrigue us?

In this time of large scale environmental and social destruction, how do we reclaim the knowledge contained in these ancient tales in order to re-imagine our relationships and re-structure our lives to include the magical?

Join us for this exploration.

We have a wonderful program of presentations this year.  

Below you will find the schedule and here 2016 ASWM Schedule PDF if you want to print it off. 

 PLEASE BE AWARE that the schedule, like life itself,  is subject to change!  

And–here are the Abstracts for those great presentations.

ASWM 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016

 7:30 am: Registration

8:30 am Room 1

Welcome and Opening

SESSION A: 9:00 am-10:15 am

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Dr. Elinor Gadon, History or Mystery: Fact of Fiction?

BREAK

SESSION B: 10:30 am -12:00 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Defiant Mothers, Rebellious Daughters: Patriarchal Family Myths and Matriarchal Mothering

1. Tamara Agha-Jaffar, Demeter, Persephone and Iambe: Three Rebels with Cause
2. Mariam Tazi-Preve, The Mother Trap
3. Molly Claire Benjamin, Magic and Fertility: The Goddess Freya as the Female Orphan Archetype

Room 2

Panel Title: Re-visioning and Hospitality in the Sacred Home of the Feminine

1. Marcella De Veaux, In Search of Home: Summoning the Goddess Ala
2. Gina Belton, The Indigenous Feminine: Fierce Receptivity in Cultivating an Ethic of Radical Hospitality
3. Toni Truesdale, Feminine Centered Dwellings as Areas of Sacred Protection

 Room 3

Panel Title: Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present Practices

Moderator: Joan Cichon

1. Heide Goettner-Abendroth via Skype, Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present New Foundation
2. Lydia Ruyle, Matriarchal Studies: A Visual, Global History
3. Cristina Biaggi, Matriarchy as Inspiration for Art
4. Kim Duckett, Being Audacious: Conceptualizing a Contemporary Goddess Women’s Community as a Matriarchal Culture

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Mama Donna Henes, Mythology, the Matriarchy, and Me “The Story of Us”
2. Alisa Starkweather, The Builder’s Daughter: Out of the land, out of the myths, comes our living work.

LUNCH & KEYNOTE– 12:15 – 1:45

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Dr. Margaret Bruchac, Pudjinskewss: Transgressive Animalities in Algonkian Indian Stories (working title)

SESSION C: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Artists, Activists, and Scientists and the Lineage of the Goddess

1. Genevieve Vaughan, The Temple of Sekhmet as Harbour and Hearth
2. Simone Clunie, The Representation of Goddess Imagery in Feminist Art
3. Nancy Vedder-Shults, Science and Divination: The Blurring Lines between the Secular and the Sacred
4. Christine Keating, Dickinson, mythopoeia, and the Akasha Paradigm

Room 2

Title: Goddesses of the Americas

(45 minutes each)

1. Anne Key and Veronica Iglesias, Fierce, and Com/Passionate and Protective: Goddesses from Central Mexico
2. Lydia Ruyle, Images and Herstories/ Goddesses of the Americas

 Room 3

Panel Title: Light in the Darkness: Locating The Goddess in Ritual Space

1. Robin Hanson, Acllacunas: Sacred Women or Virgins of the Sun
2. Jessica Bowman, The Dark Goddess
3. Mary Louise Stone, Ancient Andean Mother and Third Millenium BCE Hearths

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Kate Brunner, Becoming Branwen the Peaceweaver: A Meditative Writing Workshop for Personal Healing and Cultural Activism
2. Marie Summerwood, Chanting to Heal the Spiral Everywhere

BREAK

 SESSION D: 3:30 pm: 5:00 pm

Room 1

Panel Title: Ritual, Tradition and Feminine Intuition among the Wabanaki of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.

Room 2

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Betsy Crane, Implications of the Goddess for Gendered Sexuality: Then and Now
2. Holly Bellebuono, Women Healers of the World

 Room 3

Panel Title: Social Justice as Spiritual Choice: The Transpersonal and Transformative Goddess

1. Shirindokht Nourmanesh, The Transpersonal in Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur
2. Keisha Kogan, A Queering of the Waters in the Orisha in Santeria: Yemaya and Oshun through the Lens of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland
3. Yuria Celidwen, Tonantzin Coatlicue Guadalupe: Christian Symbolism, Colonization and Social Justice

Room 4

Film, to be announced

 BREAK

SESSION E: 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm

Room 1

Panel Title: Embracing Transgression: Women’s Spirituality and Atypical Goddess Myths

1. Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Liminality, Transgression, and Feminine Empowerment: The case of Kali and Pombagira
2. Marie Lucie Tarpent, The Animal Origins of Medusa and some other Atypical Female Deities
3. Rekha Vijayashankar, Kali’s Roar: The Rise of the Sacred Feminine as Light unto Darkness ( A Story from Indian History and Mythology)

 Room 2

Panel Title: Hearing the Call of the Ancestors through Myth, Lineage, and the Spirit of Place

1. Mary Beth Moser, Sacred Landscape: Folk Stories, Ancestral Values and the Importance of Place
2. Maryka Ives Paquette, Tracing Roots in Ancestral Lands: Remembering Through Relationship to Place
3. Marion Gail Dumont, Gateways to Submerged Histories: Biographies, Folklore and Place

Room 3

Panel Title: Male-Female Relationships in Hebrew Texts: Three Feminist Analyses

1. Judith Laura, via Skype, Gender Equity in Kabbalah?
2. Rabbi Jill Hammer, The King and the Priestess: Mythic Motifs and Motives in the Tale of Judah and Tamar
3. Judith Maeryam Wouk, Teraphim and the Role of Women

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Laura Thomae, Drumming in the Dark: Integrating Music Therapy and Traditional Healing Practices in Hospice
2. Laney Goodman, Mother Drum Ceremonial Circle

BREAK – DINNER ON YOUR OWN

SESSION F: 7:30pm – Room 1

Authors read their spiritual stories, from award winning anthology, Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality: Elders and Visionaries

Moderated by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Vicki Noble and featuring: Max Dashu, Starr Goode, Mama Donna Henes, Donna Read, Genevieve Vaughan, Cristina Biaggi, Lydia Ruyle, Miranda Shaw, Elinor Gadon, and Susun Weed

——————————————————————————————————–

 SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016

 8:30 am – Room 1

Opening and Announcements

SESSION G: 9:00 am – 10:15 am

Room 1

Panel Title: Wheels of the Goddess

1. Alexandra Cichon, Reflections on Reclaiming the Wheel of Ariadne of Bronze Age Crete
2. Joan Cichon, The Forgotten Goddesses of Ariadne’s Wheel
3. Kim Duckett, The Wheel of the Year as an Earth-Based Spiritual Psychology for Women
4. Barb Lutz, Synthesizing Goddess, Nature, Priestess, and Archeomythology: Creating Sacred Space for the Wheel of the Year

 Room 2

Panel Title: Matriarchal Matrix and Patriarchal Overlay: Three Historical Patterns

1. Constance Tippett, Archaeological Evidence of Ancient Women’s Gatherings
2. Elizabeth Kingswood, Gantowisas: The Role of Women within the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and her Influence on the Early Suffrage Movement
3. Laura Truxler, Through the Seer Stone: Cultural Landscape of Ancestral Memory and Four Generations of Early Mormon Progenitors on the Eastern Seaboard

Room 3

Panel Title: Rage, Ravages, and Rapture: Applying Goddess Wisdom to the Grieving Mother

1. Stephanie Zajchowski, Persephone’s Perception: The Paradox of Motherhood
2. Kayden Baker-McInnis, The Rich Dark of Grief: The Myths of Niobe and Demeter
3. Jaffa Frank, Objective Relatedness, Radical Empathy, and Letting Go
4. Angelina Avedano, Raging Grief and Dual Descent

Room 4

Roundtable: Native American Issues and Scholarship

BREAK

 SESSION H: 10:30 am-12:00 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Women’s Wisdom and Sacred Rites of Water

1. Mary Beth Moser, Flowing Across Time: Women, Water and the Sacred in the Italian Alps
2. Gayatri Devi and Savithri Shanker de Tourreil, Immersion: Sea and Sexuality in Goddess Myths
3. Jelka Vince Pallua, The Slavic Baba as an Aquatic Goddess

Room 2

Panel Title: Native Artists with Laura Fragua Cota

Presenters: Laura Fragua-Cota and others to be announced

Room 3

Panel Title: Goddess Myths, Nature, Wilderness and the Animal World

1. Kathryn Henderson, Deer, Women, Myth, and Spirit
2. Ingrid Kincaid, Playing by your Own Rules When the Gods Cheat: The Saga of Skadi
3. Kayden Baker-McInnis, Wilderness, Women and Soul-Making
4. Heather Kohser, Heroic Hummingbirds

Room 4

Film to be announced

 SESSION 1: 12:15 pm- 1:30 pm

Room 1

ASWM AWARDS AND NETWORKING LUNCHEON

SESSION J: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

Room 1

Panel title: By the Light and the Dark of the Moon – Lunar Knowing: The Cyclic, Dark and Regenerative Moon Nurturing Wisdom, Culture, and Research

1. Vicki Noble, Lunar Cycle Mandala and Its Cross-Cultural Evolutionary Significance
2. Demetra George, via Skype, Dark Moon Life Transitions
3. Marna Hauk, Lunar Inquiry

Room 2

Title: The Story of Niibish: Mer People of the St. Lawrence Seaway & the Great Lakes

Ann Filemyr and Tahnahga Yako Myers

Room 3

Panel Title: Women’s Spirituality, Transformative Scholarship and Personal Quest

1. Diane Jennett, Reweaving the Web: Ancestral Relationships in Research and Life
2. Kate Brunner, Rhiannon, Great Queen of the Mabinogi: Ancient Mythology in Modern Context as a Tool for Personal Healing and Social Justice Activism
3. Natasha Redina, Finding Light in Darkness: The Process of Descent from Ancient Goddesses to Present Day Women

Room 4

Workshop: April Heaslip, Reclaiming ISIS: From Traumatic Othering to Tending and Befriending

BREAK

 SESSION K: 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Room 1

Title: The Distaff: Fates, Witches, and Women’s Power

Max Dashu

Room 2

Title: The Role of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge in an Era of Global Change

Cristina Eisenberg

Room 3

 Panel Title: Sacred Lineages and the Spirit of Place

1. Barbara Daughter, Women are the Revolution: Examining the Lessons of my Motherline while Honoring the Legacy of Deborah Sampson
2. Margaret Lynn Mitchell, Seeking Sanctuary with Saint Brigid of Ireland: A Harbor of Sacred Feminine Divinity
3. Jennifer Smith, Finding the Feminine at MIT: The Great Mother Goddess under the Great Dome
4. Rain Hastings, Vinotok: Cultural Transformation through Community Ritual.

Room 4

Film and Filmmakers Roundtable

 BREAK

SESSION L: 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Women as Visionaries and Healers

Dr. Lucia Ciavola Birnbaum

BREAK—DINNER ON YOUR OWN

SESSION M: 7:30 pm

 Room 1

Special showing: Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil

A film produced/directed by Donna Carole Roberts, directed/edited by Donna Read, and narrated by Alice Walker

 The Candomblé spiritual tradition in Bahia, Brazil, a vibrant African-derived culture that evolved from slavery’s brutal past. Elder women leaders tell stories of Candomblé’s history, social challenges and triumphs, grounded in strong community, and Earth-based wisdom and practice.