“Borderlands,” Third National Conference

Check our Blog for more conference details and other news!

Third National Conference
March 28-29, 2014

“Borderlands: Scholarship as Pilgrimage and Mystery”

2014 NATIONAL CONFERENCE SAN ANTONIO, TX 

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

Registration is now open for our Third National Conference, to be held on the River Walk in San Antonio, TX, on March 28-29, 2014. The conference title is Borderlands:  Scholarship as Pilgrimage and Mystery.  

Join us to address themes that reflect scholarship on the modern borderlands– between Mexico and the US, between myth and reality– and the rich Native American and Latina traditions of the Southwest.

Click here to register for the conference.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS

We are delighted that our program for 2014 will feature keynote presentations by Dr. Jean Shinoda BolenDr. Sylvia Marcos, and Laura Fragua-Cota.

HOTEL ROOM REGISTRATION

We have negotiated a special room rate ($109 plus taxes, single or double occupancy) at the conference site hotel, El Tropicano Riverwalk (applicable both to our conference and to the preceding day’s Matriarchal Studies Day).

To register for a hotel room click here. Or call 888.474.5701 and mention ASWM.

TOPICS AND THEMES

This conference will address these topics and themes:
Mesoamerican and Native American Mythologies, Genders and Myth, Animal Mysteries, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Place Wisdom, Methodology, Asian Goddesses and Traditions,  Matriarchal Studies, and Archaeomythology.

Proposals have been accepted and the conference schedule is being finalized. Meanwhile the  post that announced our call for proposals will give you more information about the nature of the 2014 Conference.

Matriarchal Studies Day
March 2014

FLASH: On Thursday, March 27, our conference will be preceded by a separately-sponsored Matriarchal Studies Day.  This one-day event will be in the same location, and feature international speakers on historic and contemporary issues of non-patriarchal cultures.

 

About ASWM

The goal of ASWM is to support the work of those whose scholarly/creative endeavors explore or elucidate aspects of the sacred feminine, women and mythology.

You’ll find posts about all this and more on our News blog posts.

Our most recent event was our 2013 Regional Symposium in Minnesota.

Learn more about academic programs in women’s spirituality, and read our book and film reviews.

See About Us  to read the mission statement and meet the board.  If you’re so inspired, Join Now!  We will soon have a member-only web site with many additional resources.

For the past decade, ASWM has been developing events related to scholarship and education.  We have held regional symposia annually, and two national conferences.  Check out our Past Events.

We honor outstanding scholarship in all its forms through our program of awards for the arts, literature, and dissertations.

We also present the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality, on alternate years.  Winners are Margot Adler and Charlene Spretnak.

We have a commitment to including artists in the dialogue—see our invitational Art Gallery of members’ works and the page called Myth in Living Rituals.

ASWM’s logo is based on a Bee Goddess plaque from Rhodes.  Learn more about Bees and their symbols.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Application for Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology

Deadline for submission: January 31, 2014