The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology
Dear friends of ASWM,
This is a sad day for all who love Lydia, and who have been touched by her beautiful artwork. We will have more to say about her life and work in future posts, but for now, we all pause to remember her dedication, intelligence, and generosity, and through our sadness, we celebrate her achievements and her loving heart.
Here is a joyful article about her “living memorial service,” a gathering earlier this month in her home town of Greeley, CO.
Aloha, Lydia.
The ASWM Board
For those of you who want to learn more about We’Moon projects, or to find out how to submit art or words, here is their complete contact list:
Dr. Cristina Eisenberg will present the Saturday keynote for our 2016 conference. This cutting-edge presentation will weave a web of connections among animals, humans, myths and foremothers.
Dark Ecology is a post-modern philosophy based on the premise that there is no division between the human and the non-human. For millennia, animals and humans shared ecosystems, moving together in a trophic, spiral dance, celebrating life across the ebb and flow of the seasons through birth and death, great migrations, the sanctity of the hunt. Modern humans imposed a mechanistic, anthropocentric, masculine view of the world, one based on human dominion over nature. Today we know that such beliefs are completely untenable and have led to the ecological wreckage we see worldwide. As we strive to mend the tangled web of life and repair the damage we’ve wrought to whole ecosystems and all the beings that inhabit them, the animals, particularly animal mothers, are functioning as guides as they always have. These animals are teaching us profound lessons in dark ecology: what it means to be human and nonhuman and how there really is no dividing line, how we are but part of the same continuum. Their lessons will enable us to live more rightly on the earth and restore the planet and our human spirits. Cristina Eisenberg will share some of the lessons she’s received from animal mothers she’s known and others that have shaped her work as a scientist. She will discuss the bright chimeric hope these animal teachers have to offer to humanity.
It is with great pleasure that ASWM confers the 2016 Sarasvati Book Award for Nonfiction to THE AMAZONS for its power in reframing knowledge about our female ancestors and reawakening scholarly as well as metaphysical and physical pathways that link history and myth.
Think of everything you know about the ancient mythological warrior women collectively known as the Amazons–and prepare to have most of it overturned. In a breathtaking achievement of research and methodical exploration of archaeological, literary, and artistic sources, Adrienne Mayor sifts through centuries of evidence to get at the reality of who the Amazons were, where and when they lived, what they did, and how they did it.
The award letter states,
The authoritative command of the research reveals the Amazons as they have never been seen before, not merely figments of the Greek imagination, but actual flesh and blood warrior women of nomadic cultures, inspiring exciting tales from ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia and China. First to examine the evidence systematically and in detail, the book reveals the truth behind storytelling as it persuasively elucidates the history, art, and imagination of ancient peoples, drawing on an impressively diverse set of data sources from classical myth, nomadic traditions and folklore, and scientific archaeology to visual representations from Greek pottery to body tattoo.
Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University, is the author of The First Fossil Hunters: (2000); Fossil Legends of the First Americans (2005); Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (2003); The Poison King: Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (2010, National Book Award nonfiction finalist); The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (2014); and many scholarly and popular articles. Her work is featured on NPR, BBC, History Channel, New York Times, USA Today, Smithsonian, and National Geographic and she is a regular contributor at WondersandMarvels.com.
The Sarasvati Award, named for the Hindu goddess of learning and the creative arts, honors creative work in the fields of goddess and mythology studies. The award is presented biennially at ASWM conferences. The award will be accepted this year by Dr. Miriam Robbins Dexter on behalf of Dr. Mayor.
Past winners of the Sarasvati Award for Nonfiction include Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor H. Mair (Cambria, 2010). and The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology and the Origins of European Dance, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (Norton, 2013).
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