In order to foster scholarship and collaboration, we offer presenters an opportunity to have their conference papers included in our member-only section of the web site. We are presently able to include PDFs of the papers themselves, but there is limited space on this site for large files or numerous illustrations.
If your presentation has many illustrations, we urge you to include it on your own blog. In order to access this site, you have created your own WordPress account, and you are entitled to set up a blog there. Once you add your paper to the blog, we can easily set up a link to this page, so that other members may read your presentation and see graphics as they were originally included. We will provide title and abstract information, with a link to a PDF of the text of the paper.
The Green Goddess, Our first biennial multi-day conference, was held April 23 to 25, 2010, at Kirkridge Retreat Center, Bangor, PA.
Labyrinth at Kirkridge
Keynote speakers included Max Dashu of Suppressed Histories with a tour de force presentation on female icons, Cristina Eisenberg (a wolf biologist who is actively engaged in ecological restoration that supports sustainability of wildlife communities and of the human spirit), Dr. Ann Filemyr on healing from the nature/culture divide, and Cristina Biaggi on the Great Goddess as a green goddess, through the lens of art and history.
Margot Adler was honored with our first Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality, and the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Goddess Studies went to Dawn Work-Makinne, Ph.D.
Lydia Ruyle’s inspiring goddess banners graced the meeting space, and she will offered an art workshop. Our film series premiered “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” about the ordination of Catholic women priests, and featured ethnologist Sabine Jell-Bahlson’s film on Mammywata.
Topics included lady of the beasts, publishing goddess scholarship, spiritual geometry and the goddess, archaeomythology, the divine feminine as vortex, finding your sacred language, the wheel of the year as spiritual psychology, frog mysteries, and much more.
Poet Annie Finch gave a masked reading; novelist Elizabeth Cunningham read from her Maeve novels; storyteller Diane Wolkstein presented The Monkey King; and singer Ruth Barrett gave a “concert for Gaia.”
The 2010 conference took place at the beautiful Kirkridge Retreat Center, atop the Pocono mountain ridges near the Delaware Water Gap. Kirkridge is located about 90 minutes from both New York City and Philadelphia.
On April 2010, ASWM conferred the first Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality to journalist and cultural commentator Margot Adler.
Margot Adler is a long-time correspondent for National Public Radio, based in NPR’s New York Bureau. Her reports can be heard regularly on All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. From 1999-2008, Adler was also the host of NPR’s Justice Talking, a weekly show exploring constitutional controversies in the nation’s courts.
Adler is the author of the ground-breaking study of alternative spirituality in America, Drawing Down the Moon, which introduced nature religions to hundreds of thousands of readers. She is an active lecturer on pagan studies and women’s spirituality. The presentation of the first Demeter Award to Adler recognized her influence in changing public perceptions of women’s religions, past and present.
Award-winning poet Annie Finch, featured speaker at our ASWM Conference, reflects on the activities of the weekend:
The ASWM conference was truly a life-weaving web–and a life-changing one for me. I have rarely (never?!!) read for an audience that “got” my goddess poems so profoundly–it was humbling. Overall, the quality of so many presentations was so high–and the content so amazing, so rich, so nourishing. I especially remember performances by Elizabeth Cunningham in her bawdy bodice, reciting a Magdalen prologue from memory prefaced and concluded by songs (what novelist ever does that??!); Cristina Eisenberg’s superb keynote presentation on women and wolves; the remarkable world premiere of the film Pink Smoke Over the Vatican; untangling patriarchy over lunch with Oloye Aina Olomo; dancing a raucous Sicilian dance and participating in Betz King’s superb womb-healing ceremony; being inundated, filled, by fantastic presentations exploring images of the Goddess in the form of bee, butterfly, deer, snake, wolf. . . and meeting so many new and established (Margot Adler! Diane Wolkstein!) brave scholars, writers, and artists, who give so much, care so much, do so much to further this much-needed herstory. I wish ASWM a long and flourishing life, since I know that will mean many more astounding conferences!
News posts about Scholar Salons News can be found here.
Scholar Salons are a member benefit; members will find a comprehensive list of all upcoming Salons, Registration links and Recrodings can be found on the Scholar Salons: Registration and Recordings page. Or members can browse Salons and recordingshere.
Note to members: Please try to register at least a week before a salon, so that if you have any issues registering or logging in, our volunteers can help resolve them in time.
You must be logged in to post a comment.