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Farewell to Elinor Gadon

Elinor Gadon, 92, died peacefully at her home in Cambridge, MA on May 8th.

As an art historian specializing in the art and culture of India, she taught at Harvard, Tufts and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and held an appointment as a Life Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. Her 1989 book, The Once and Future Goddess, became an essential text for the women’s spirituality and Goddess movements, and for college courses on Women and Mythology around the world.

Longtime friend and colleague Dianne Jenett says that her research continued to the end of her life:

With stamina and passionate intellectual curiosity which inspired many of us, in her seventies and eighties Elinor returned to the India she loved in order to do research on the village goddesses of Orissa.  Her son John said, after he read letters women from all over the world sent to her, “I had no idea she changed so many lives.” She will be sorely missed.

Born on September 17, 1925 to Maurice H. Weiner and Jean (Kaplan) Weiner, Elinor grew up in Reading, PA, where her parents were the proprietors of Weiner’s Men’s Clothing store on Penn Street. She graduated from Reading High School in 1942 and from the University of Michigan in 1945. She later obtained her doctorate in History of Culture from the University of Chicago.

She was the recipient of the Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts from the Women’s Caucus for Art, and of the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology in 2016.

When she received the Demeter award, she responded,

“I have tears in my eyes… how nice of all of you to recognize my work. I really did what was in my heart and on my mind, and how wonderful to have it reach so many people. Let’s keep on with this vision because it’s women who are going to save the world.”

 

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2018 Conference Presentations

We are pleased to include public links to papers and presentations that are published elsewhere on the web. Additional material will be posted to our Member-only  Resources page.

2018 Conference papers:

#1 Genevieve Vaughan on the Gift Economy:

“We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.”

Beyond Capitalist Patriarchy: the Model of the Maternal Gift Economy

The two parts of this paper were presented on March 17, 2018, at the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Conference in Las Vegas, and on the following day, March 18, at the associated Modern Matriarchal Studies Day.

The paper presented on March 17 was part of the panel “Motherhood, Resistance, and Matriarchal Politics,” with co-presenters Vicki Noble and Heide Goettner-Abendroth.

 Genevieve also presented an earlier version of this paper on March 12, 2018, to the Cambridge Realist Workshop, Clare College, Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England in a shared Session with Professor Rajani Kanth.

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Kathy Jones Receives 2018 Demeter Award

Kathy Jones Receives 2018 Demeter Award from ASWM Board

At the 2018 Conference, the ASWM Board of Directors was pleased to present the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality to Kathy Jones, author, teacher, and creatrix of the Glastonbury Goddess Conference and the Goddess Temple of Glastonbury.  The award letter reads, in part,

“As a writer, healer, teacher, Priestess of Avalon, visionary, and scholar, we recognize the important roles that you have played in restoring the divine feminine to modern culture. Your tireless work for thirty-plus years, bringing the awareness of Goddess back to the U.K., Europe, the U.S., and the world, has provided not only important original scholarship but also the creation of a vital energetic container for explorations of Goddess archetypes and practices.

“Your considerable body of written work explores the mysteries of sacred land, mythology, and healing: Soul and Shadow: Birthing Motherworld, 2017; Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 2006; In the Nature of Avalon: Goddess Pilgrimages in Glastonbury’s Sacred Landscape, 2007; The Ancient British Goddess: Goddess Myths, Legends, Sacred Sites, Present Revelation, 2001; Chiron in Labys: An Introduction to Esoteric Soul Healing, 1997; Breast Cancer: Hanging on by a Red Thread, 1998; On Finding Treasure: Mystery Plays of the Goddess, 1999; Spinning the Wheel of Ana: a Spiritual Quest to Find the Primal British Ancestors, 1994; and The Goddess in Glastonbury, 1990.  

“We thank you for all of your work to restore Goddess Spirituality to a modern world much in need.”

In accepting the award, Kathy joins a select group of prior winners and foremothers: Margot Adler, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlene Spretnak, Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum.

 

 

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These Books Available at Las Vegas Conference

On Saturday afternoon we will have a Marketplace with book signings available from 4 to 8 pm.  Many of our presenters will have books on hand to inspire you–such as:

 

Sherri L. Mitchell is the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change.  She was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation, at Indian Island in Maine. A civil rights attorney, educator and advocate for women and children, Sherri is the Executive Director of the Land Peace Foundation, which provides assistance to Indigenous populations and groups. Sherri is also a published poet, scholar and philosopher.

Beverly Little Thunder is a Two-Spirit mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and lifelong activist. Beverly is also a published author of the memoir, One Bead at a Time and a chapter in Two Spirit People (1995).

Annie Finch is an award-winning poet, writer, speaker, performer, and witch. Her eighteen books include Eve, Calendars, A Poet’s Craft, Spells, and Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams, which received ASWM’s 2010 Sarasvati Award.

 

Named a “Wisdom Keeper of the Goddess Spirituality Movement” in 2013, Nancy Vedder-Shults, Ph.D, is the author of The World is Your Oracle: Divinatory Practices for Tapping Your Inner Wisdom (Fair Winds Press: 2017).

Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba’s cross-cultural, women-centered interests are reflected in her two recent books, The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe: Tradition and Transformation (UNMP) and Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America: Baba Yaga, Kali, Pombagira, and Santa Muerte  (Palgrave).

       

And of course ASWM’s own Vibrant Voices:  Women, Myth and the Arts and Myths Shattered and Restored.

 

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Sherri L. Mitchell Keynote: “Women are the Water Bearers of the Universe”

Sherri L. Mitchell was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation, at Indian Island in Maine. A civil rights attorney, educator and advocate for women and children, Sherri serves as a legal analyst/advisor to Indigenous and Aboriginal groups across the United States and Canada. In 2009, Sherri’s work on nation-state complicity with Indigenous human rights violations won her the Maloney-Dunn International Human Rights and Humanitarian Award.  She has also received the Maine Governor’s Community Service Award (1996, 1997 and 1998) and the Spirit of Maine Award (2015).

Sherri is the Executive Director of the Land Peace Foundation, which provides legal assistance, dispute resolution and training programs to Indigenous populations and groups, in order to protect their human rights, homelands, sacred sites, resources and cultural way of life. The staff page reads,

We are accomplished advocates, negotiators and litigators who are committed to promoting a historically proven culture of sustainability that ensures the protection of the land, the people, environment and a way-of-life that is in harmony with the natural world. Through our work to protect indigenous lands, natural resources, sacred sites and fundamental human rights and freedoms we are ensuring the continuation of all life.

An alumni member of two prestigious American Indian Leadership Programs, Sherri is also a published poet, scholar and philosopher. She is most recently the author of Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change.