Category: Conferences & Symposia

ASWM Conferences, held biennially in even-numbered years, and symposia, held on occasion in odd-numbered years

Posted on

Conference Keynote: Dr. Sylvia Marcos

SylviaMarcosWeb

ASWM is pleased to announce that Sylvia Marcos will be a conference keynote speaker for Friday March 28th. Her presentation, entitled “Duality and Divinity: Gender and Eros in Mesoamerican Spirituality” is highly anticipated.

Sylvia Marcos is a scholar committed to indigenous movements throughout the Americas. As a university professor and researcher she has proposed a new vision in the field of feminist critical epistemology, Mesoamerican religions, and women within indigenous movements, while promoting an antihegemonic-feminist practice, theory and hermeneutics. She is the author of Taken from the Lips: Gender and Eros in Mesoamerican Religions (Brill, 2006), and editor of Women and Indigenous Religions (Praeger, 2010), and Dialogue and  Difference: Feminisms Challenge Globalization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Dr. Marcos, who is the founder of the Anthropology and Gender Institute of Anthropological Research at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), is a research associate in Religion and Society with the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH) and has received several awards and scholarships in Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard University. She has been a visiting professor, scholar in residence, and guest professor at universities around the world, including Smith, Mount Holyoke, Amherst, Hampshire, and University of Massachusetts, University of California, Harvard University, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Claremont University, and University of California at Riverside, among others. She has been a guest lecturer at several universities in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba. In the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, United States, Japan, South Korea, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Turkey, Egypt, Jamaica and Kurdistan.

Posted on

Sarasvati Awards: New Email Address!

The Sarasvati Book Awards program for best nonfiction, fiction, and poetry has a change of email address. Publishers: If you have already submitted a book for consideration, please do so again using this email address for guidelines: aswmsubmissions@gmail.com

The awards cover books published during the past two calendar years. Nominations must come from the publisher. Self-published books and anthologies are not eligible for the awards.

Apologies to those of you who have submitted under the old address, which is no longer functional.

Posted on

2014 Film Series Accepting Submissions

Movie-Ticket-1The 2014 National ASWM Conference in San Antonio (March 28-30, 2014) will feature a Film Series on scholarly subjects related to women and mythology.   Documentary, narrative, and creative films will be considered for inclusion.  The following guidelines are in place for selection of films.

ASWM Film Guidelines

1.      The film should be a scholarly work from a feminist/womanist perspective.

2.      The focus of the film should include some form of women’s experience. (This may also include addressing the exclusion of women.)

3.      The film topic should include a component of myth, sacredness and/or practice inspired by earth spirituality.

4.      The film may address  historical, contemporary or future-oriented topics anywhere on the globe, in cyberspace, and beyond.

5.      The film may be artistic or realistic in approach.

6.      ASWM wishes to encourage respectful study and representation of diverse cultures and experience.  To that end, films should include the perspective of those being filmed to every extent possible.  Collaborative projects are welcomed.

Films may be submitted for consideration by contacting aswmsubmissions@gmail.com for the submission form.  Deadline is November 22, 2013.  Please put “Film Proposal” in the subject line followed by the film title.

Posted on

The 2014 Kore Award for Best Dissertation

The Kore Award, offered through the Association for Study of Women and Mythology and made possible through the gift of a generous contributor, recognizes excellence in scholarship in the area of women and mythology. It is offered in even-numbered years, for dissertations completed in the previous two calendar years (including defense).

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.

Applications for the 2014 award may be made between November 1, 2013 and January 31, 2014.  Selection is made by a panel of scholars from a variety of disciplines.

_______

Application for Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology

Deadline for submission: January 31, 2014

Posted on

Updated Call for Papers, 2014 Conference

We have updated our CFP to reflect developments in program planning!  Please share widely.

Call for Papers

Borderlands: Scholarship as Pilgrimage and Mystery

The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM)

2014 National Conference San Antonio, TX March 28-30

 

We invite you to submit proposals to the ASWM Third Biennial National Conference. ASWM is a professional organization supporting scholarly and creative endeavors that explore or elucidate aspects of the sacred feminine.

  • As this conference takes place in the modern borderland between Mexico and the US and in the stronghold of Native American and Latina traditions of the Southwest, we invite you to consider these topics:

    • Mesoamerican/American Indigenous cultures in relation to women and myth

    • Weaving as spiritual practice

    • Indigenous foods as connected to place and self

    • Native language retention as connected to cultural preservation

    • Spiritual, cultural and mythic traditions (such as Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos and La Llorona, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Corn Mother, Spider Woman)

    • Borderland myths and reality of women’s lives

    • Curanderas and healing practices

    • Myth and folklore associated with water

    • Women’s roles in spiritual practices at home and in community

    • The language of  petroglyphs as markers of female diety

  • How does mythology about women interact with the sense and reality of place? How does our scholarship change when place becomes an element or partner in our research? What does it mean to find wisdom in places?

  • What are new paths for the field of Women’s Spirituality and Goddess Studies, including archeomythology?  What are new models and methods for our scholarly inquiry?

  • What are the complexities around issues of Cultural Appropriation?  How do we understand and address the tensions around rootedness and local culture and issues of lineage and history?  Are there new ways to honor history and culture while enriching our scholarship?

  • One of the groundbreaking books from Patricia Monaghan was Oh Mother Sun: A New Vision of the Cosmic Feminine. We invite you to submit proposal ideas that are in dialogue with this work about solar goddesses.

  • Animal mysteries, including myth and folklore especially related to horses or to predators.

  • Liminal deity, spanning borders of species, sex, and gender

Proposals for papers, panels, and workshops addressing these topics will be given preference, but other subjects will be considered.  Papers should be 20 minutes; up to four papers on a related topic may be proposed together.  Workshops (limited to 90 minutes) should be organized to provide audience interaction and must clearly address theme.

 

Presenters from all disciplines are welcome, as well as creative artists, filmmakers and practitioners who engage mythic themes in a scholarly manner in their work.  Presenters must become members of ASWM prior to conference.

To submit your proposal, complete this online form by November 1, 2013 .