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Seeking Proposals for 2012 ASWM Conference

Chalice (and hand) by Susan Minyard

CREATING THE CHALICE:  

Imagination and Integrity in Goddess Studies

The Association for the Study of Women

and Mythology

Biennial National Conference

San Francisco May 11-12, 2012.

Advancing our scholarship involves the evolution and refinement of our methods.  Suggested topics for this exciting conference might include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • What are new paths for the field of Women’s Spirituality and Goddess Studies?  How creative can we be?  Are we inventing, reconstructing, or using creative license to reawaken and bring the past into the present?  How do we evaluate this work?  How can we use this creative work together with more “traditional’ approaches to advance our scholarship?
  • What are new models and methods for our scholarly inquiry?  Can we develop and advance our scholarship with methods such as Organic or Heuristic inquiry?  What is Spiritual Autobiography, and how can this be useful?  Sacred geography?  What else?  How shall our new methods be evaluated?  What are our criteria for solid scholarship using these new models?
  • What are the complexities around issues of Cultural Appropriation?  How do we understand and address the tensions around rootedness and local culture on the one hand, and issues of lineage and history on the other?  Are there new models of scholarship that honor history and culture while simultaneously enriching our scholarship?

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 and practitioners who engage mythic themes in a scholarly manner in their work.  Presenters must become members of ASWM prior to conference.

Send 250-word abstract (for panels, 200 word abstract plus up to 150 words per paper) to aswmsubmissions@gmail.com by January 15, 2012.  Include bio of up to 70 words for each presenter, as well as contact information including surface address and email.

About the chalice:  see Susan’s work at www.SweetwaterPottery.biz

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Die Zeit ist Reif: Report on the 2011 International Congress on Matriarchal Studies

by Lin Daniels, MA, Amazon Icon Foundation

            “Better to build lifeboats than to wait for the Patriarchy-Titanic to listen to reason” was the emphasis of this year’s conference.  It was an examination of what to do about the patriarchy-built looming global crisis. The conference was a feast for the mind and the heart as women from all over the world convened to find answers.

The conference was held in the medieval town of St. Gallen, at the Town Hall. The old building was transformed by the art exhibitions.  The photo exhibit by Siegrun Claaben gave glimpses of the New Matriarchal Mystery Festivals that began in 1983. They invoked the spirit of the time. “The 1000 PeaceWomen Across the Globe” exhibit displayed biographical postcards of women who have all profoundly changed lives on this planet for the better. Lydia Ruyle’s powerful banners graced all of the halls of the building. They set the atmosphere of the conference.

Dr. Cecile Keller designed and facilitated the rituals that closed the days of the Kongress, with drumming led by Isabella Verbruggen and Loes Moezelaar of the Netherlands.  We conjured a grand spectacle as hundreds of women made a sacred circle in the park in front of the town hall.

Continue reading “Die Zeit ist Reif: Report on the 2011 International Congress on Matriarchal Studies”

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Cultural Appropriation and Respectful Research

Cultural Appropriation and Respectful Research

The issue of cultural appropriation is important to all of us as researchers, subjects, and scholars exploring just about any topic.  Here are some articles related to appropriate and inappropriate approaches to cross-cultural research.

Max Dashu’s excellent article Respect and Responsibility concerns the appropriation of Native American cultures in the work of Lynn Andrews and other non-Native authors.  Though the article first appeared in 1994, the information is still relevant today.

The issues of naming and claiming traditional titles is described in the blogKathang Pinay 2, a forum for understanding Philippine Babaylan cultural concerns.

And, here is a recent article about an archaeological project in Australia where researchers worked with rather than in spite of native elders: Rock Art finds

 

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2011 East Symposium in Philadelphia

The Embodied Goddess, our first East Coast Regional Symposium, took place on March 12-13, 2011 in Philadelphia.More than 50 scholars attended the event.

The first-ever Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts was given to Layne Redmond. Her presentation was a highlight of the evening performances.Click here for more information on Layne Redmond.

Miranda Shaw, Ph.D.,  of the University of Richmond opened the Symposium on Saturday afternoon with a keynote speech on “Living Goddesses: Embodying the Divine in Buddhist Nepal.” Dr. Shaw is the author of Buddhist Goddesses of India and Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism.

 

 As with the spring 2010 conference at Kirkridge, Lydia Ruyle’s inspiring goddess banners graced the meeting space.  Lydia also gave two presentations on embodied goddesses of the Americas and Anatolia.

Saturday evening featured performances by vocal group SheWho as well as conference participants Shelley Graff, Serpentessa, and Tova Beck-Friedman. Sunday morning starts with a networking breakfast, and the program concludes before lunch.

Program

See titles and presenters.

Through talk, film, visual art, dance, song, poetry, and more, goddesses as diverse as Demeter, Ogbuide and  inspired the gathering.

Topics ranged from river deities in African spirituality to embodiments of the female divine in Judaism;  from primordial figures to goddess images in contemporary art; descent myths to encounters with serprents; and ancient earth goddess in art to embodied spiritual 
empowerment.

Experiential workshops included “Wild Earth Shebrew (chants),” “Belly on Earth, Snake on Skin,” “Evoking and Re-membering the Ancient Earth Goddess” (a clay workshop), and “Singing in Sacred Circle.”

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Goddess. Women. Cloth: Mary Kelly’s Keynote Presentation

The keynote speaker for the ASWM 2011 Midwest Symposium was Mary B. Kelly, textile expert and artist, who presented a lecture entitled Goddess. Women. Cloth: Inspired Ritual Textiles from Around the World. Kelly’s research shows that in folk cultures across the world, women make textiles inspired by goddesses and use them in rituals to honor their deities, contact spirits or protect their families and communities. This is not just an historical art, but continues today in many regions of the world.

Mary Kelly, photo by M. McDermott

Kelly’s presentation began with a textile fortunately preserved in ice, from Siberia in 400 BCE. This cloth was sewn with symbols of a seated goddess, crowned, seated under a sacred tree. Kelly compared and contrasted this cloth with another textile from the 19th century CE showing a goddess and a sacred tree of life surrounded by birds. The iconography was surprisingly similar over this very long period of time. Kelly had slides showing offerings of woven cloth placed at sacred trees, with gold coins placed on the cloths.

Also very common in sacred textiles of northern and eastern Europe are images of the horned deer mother and her deer daughter. (Female reindeer are horned, and in fact among some of these peoples the constellations we call Big and Little Dipper are named the Deer Mother and Deer Daughter.) In addition to appearing on textiles, the deer’s horn appears in the peaked headdress worn by brides in Slovakia.

Horned Goddess, with daughter riding horse with horned headress (Russia)

These textiles formed a major modality for passing traditions down from woman to woman. The cloths are imbued with power: protection and fertility. The symbols must be absolutely correct for the power to be fully expressed. The inspiration of the goddess came to the weavers in dreams, showing the patterns to be woven. These weavers believe if they don’t use symbols correctly the world will fall.

Embroidered Goddess from Norway
Kelly enhanced her presentation by offering participants the chance to handle and interact with many of the textiles in her own collection. These cloths were from northern and eastern Europe, Greece, southeast Asia, Mexico and South America. Cross-culturally, and perhaps surprisingly, the imagery is quite consistent in many ways.

Mary B. Kelly is Professor Emerita at Tompkins Cortland Community College, an affiliate of the State University of New York, and holds advanced degrees from Syracuse University and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has published numerous books and articles in the United States and abroad, notably in Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia, ed. L. Welters (1999 ); Making and Using Ritual Cloth ( 2004 ); Goddess Embroideries of the Northlands ( 2009 ); Kaspaikka Muistiilina ( Memory Cloth); ed. L. Sappi (2010); and Goddesses in World Culture, ed. P. Monaghan (2010).

Kelly’s research has been supported by several Fulbright grants, and recent articles have appeared in such textile publications as Piecework, Needle Arts, Bunad, and Vesterheim. She served as guest curator of the exhibition “Sacred Symbols, Ceremonial Cloth” at the Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum in Decorah, IA (2009). She has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution and the Textile Museum, in Washington, DC, the Mingei Museum of Folk Art,The Czech and Slovak Museum, the Ukrainian Museum, and at Oslo University, Norway.

Kelly makes her home on Hilton Head Island, SC, where she teaches, exhibits and maintains a painting/weaving studio.