Category: News & Articles

General ASWM news and organizational updates

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Join Us for a Goddess Banquet during the 2020 Conference

 

Join four Hebrew Priestesses–Amanda Nube, Judith Maeryam Wouk, Sheva Melmed, and Sarah Chandler–for a vegetarian dinner & ritual to celebrate the opening of the Jewish sabbath with poetry, prayer, and song. This special event takes place on Friday, March 13, over the dinner hour at ASWM’s 2020 conference. The language of the ritual plays with gender of God/Goddess both in Hebrew and English. It also includes some earth-based imagery. Participants will have the option to interact with natural objects on a small altar at the center of our table/altar, as well as the option for contemplative time. For more information and to RSVP, contact Sarah Chandler.  All are welcome.

The cost is $75 per person. A limited number of subsidized scholarships are available. Please contact Sarah to inquire.  It is required that all participants register and pay in advance, as the meal will be catered. To register, send $75 via PayPal from the ASWM Donation page, with “FRIDIN” in the “use my donation for” section.  Reservations are required and will be accepted until March 9th, which is the hotel’s catering deadline.

Remember to use the Donation page and write FRIDIN in the memo!

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Announcing Scholar Salon 4

Scholar Salon 4: "La Frontierra Chingada"

Join us for the Salon with filmmaker Emily Packer
Wednesday, February 22
2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Association for the Study of Women and Mythology is inviting you to a film screening and a follow-up Zoom meeting.

"La Frontierra Chingada" is a poetic film about mythic motherhood and transformation at the US-Mexico border.a

Then join the discussion with Filmmaker Emily Packer!

Wednesday, February 22
2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

 

Emily Packer, Filmmaker
Read more about Emily and the Feature Film on our News blog.

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Scholar Salon: Filmmaker Emily Packer’s Vision of Mythic Motherhood on the Border

February 22, 2020
2pm Eastern Standard Time

ASWM Online Scholar Salon with Filmmaker Emily Packer

La Frontierra Chingada is a 2015 poetic non-fiction film about motherhood on the US-Mexico border. Mythic figures like Tonāntzin, the Virgin Guadalupe, la Llorona and la Chingada, manifest themselves at Friendship Park–a space where families on either side of la frontera can come together, but meet there under extreme conditions of surveillance. Guided in part by conversations with the filmmaker’s matrilineal family, the film concerns itself with relationships betweenwomen’s bodies, space, and the shared land and history in the San Diego-Tijuana region.

 

Scholar Salons with Emily Packer, Filmmaker

Emily Packer is an experimental non-fiction filmmaker with an interest in border culture and border theory.  She says, “A huge part of my trepidation in making this film was about not wanting to presume to be able to make a relevant film about the border as an Anglo American filmmaker.  But I think it’s incredibly important for white artists to make reflexive work about the border, given that we are implicated in its existence, and that our understanding and perspective shift is necessary to improve the situation (which includes death, dehumanization, and forced separation of family). At some point I gave myself permission to trust that I could make meaningful art about the border, and that the story I had to tell was important.”

See the one-hour film, available now in ASWM’s member-only resource library, and join us for a conversation with Emily about crossing and transforming borders that separate us. The Salon discussion will be moderated by Natasha Redina, a filmmaker and ecotherapist who is a member of ASWM’s advisory board.

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2020 Conference Presentation by Judy Grahn: “Living in a Sentient World”

 

Judy is unable to attend the conference. We are hoping to Skype in her presentation. Please check the updated conference schedule.

“For forty years I’ve been thinking and writing about the intense psychic connections we can experience with creatures, including insects, that live around us, incorporating them in my poetry and my novel, Mundane’s World, as well as in stories.  This paper will discuss how to recognize and induce these connections of inter-species consciousness (shared sacred space), how to record and believe the experiences, and then how to write them.  My goal is to share these accounts with more skeptical humans in order to reduce both cynicism and romanticism, to strengthen bonds between people and creature life, to encourage recognition of shared minds, and to amplify the value we place on beings who share space with us. I’ll illustrate the topic with selections from my current work in progress.”

Judy Grahn is internationally known as a poet, author and cultural theorist. She has published fourteen books, with two more forthcoming. Judy holds a Ph.D. in Integral Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she often teaches. She is retired co-director and core faculty of the Women’s Spirituality MA program at New College of California, and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and Sofia University.

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Announcing the 2020 Sarasvati Award for Best Nonfiction Book

The Sarasvati Book Award solicits scholarly nonfiction books published during 2018-2019 in the fields of goddess studies/women and mythology. Named for the Hindu goddess of learning and the creative arts, the award is given by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology to honor outstanding scholarship and presentation. The award will be presented during ASWM’s 2020 conference in Albuquerque, NM.

Submissions and book copies must be received by the Awards Committee no later than February 1, 2020. Books must be published in print, rather than only in e-book format. Nominations must come directly from the publisher; authors should contact their publishers to ask them to submit a work for this award. Each publisher may nominate one work published in 2018-2019. Anthologies and self-published books are not eligible for this award.

 Contact aswmsubmissions@gmail.com for forms and details of the submissions process.