News

WELCOME to our 2016 Conference blog.

Important links are listed below, or you may scroll through this blog to see all posts about the conference.  Here you will find articles about the program, presenters, and special opportunities.

Our pre-conference registration deadline has now passed.  We will accept walk-in registrations on Friday, April 1, starting at 7:30 AM.

Accommodations are at Boston Marriott Hotel Burlington:

Book your group rate for The Association for the Study of Women & Mythology

Learn about our keynoters: Dr. Elinor Gadon, Dr. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, and Dr. Cristina Eisenberg.

Register for Matriarchal Studies Day here (March 31, the day before our coference, at the same location, but with separate registration) or contact cichon @ oakton.edu

See our Schedule: 2016 ASWM Schedule_Mar_23_book

Read about the new anthology and authors readings:  Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement:  Elders and Visionaries

Read about Mythica:  A Photography Exhibit by Lisa Levart

See our special Saturday night offering, Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil , a film by Donna Roberts and Donna Read, narrated by Alice Walker.

Stay for this Sunday workshop with Vicki Noble and Julie Felix:  TRANSFORMATIONAL HEALING RITUAL in Boston (Medford)   Sunday, April 3rd, from 2:30 – 5:30 pm   Bring drums and rattles. Please RSVP to Nouri Newman nourinewman@comcast.net. 

And their special workshop on the Cape on Monday:  Women’s Evening of Sacred Practices

 

 

 

Cristina Eisenberg

“Wilderness is one of our best defenses against climate change.”

Cristina Eisenberg is Chief Scientist for Earthwatch Institute, a Smithsonian Research Associate, and science consultant for many prestigious organizations in the US and Canada. Her research has investigated trophic cascades and the effects of predators on landscape health and biodiversity. She has emerged as a leading voice for wilderness and large predator conservation in North America.

Cristina is the author of The Wolf’s Tooth and The Carnivore Way: Coexisting with and Conserving America’s Predators. Matt Miller, reviewing The Carnivore Way for Cool Green Science, (June 12, 2014) says

“Eisenberg is the perfect scientist to write this book. She lives in a Montana cabin where she encounters the predators of which she writes: wolves, mountain lions, grizzly bears, lynx. . . .Her research and review of the literature leave her convinced that large predators are essential for landscape health, and vital for our own values of wildness and wonder.”

“In order to create change, you have to engage people, and you have to not just engage their minds. You have to engage their hearts, and that means telling our stories. . . . In terms of carnivore conservation, we need to build community. We need to have that solid science, and we need to find a way to share our story.”

Cristina Eisenberg’s special conference presentation is entitled “The Role of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge in an Era of Global Change.”   She will discuss the changes taking place from ecological, ethical, and feminine mythological perspectives, and how the values embodied by Traditional Ecological Knowledge across world cultures contain the elements essential for human survival and for the wellbeing of all life on Earth.

“Traditional Ecological Knowledge that taps into the divine feminine can teach us much in terms of how to live more rightly on this Earth, how to heal the damage we have done, and how to mitigate, adapt to, and slow the processes that threaten every living being today. ” 

Cristina Biaggi

The Great Goddess,  in whatever manifestation she was depicted,  was the supreme deity in the Paleolithic and Neolithic period throughout the world.  She has re-emerged in the 20th and 21st century as an apt symbol of woman’s growing consciousness and importance.  The need to make the Goddess accessible through art as an embodiment of “feminine sensibility” is becoming extremely important in this world of growing militarism.

Cristina Biaggi, artist, activist and scholar, has achieved international recognition as a sculptor of bronze and wood pieces. Using the theme of interconnection, she has also created large outdoor installations, and has explored collage in the two and three dimensional form. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. She is a respected authority on the Great Goddess, Neolithic and Paleolithic prehistory, and the origin and impact of patriarchy on contemporary life.

“I create my sculptures inspired by these ideas.  Sculpture in the Western world has lost the mystical magical presence that it had during the Neolithic period when a temple or a sculpture was considered to be the body of the deity.  In creating my sculpture, I wish to bring back some of this magic and mystery.  I want to create a space that inspires mystery; that evokes the dark caves of the Goddess – places of rebirth and revitalized consciousness.”

“Cristina Biaggi’s work –seminal, gorgeous, provocative. No one like her!” Olympia Dukakis, Film and Stage Actor

 Cristina’s presentation “Matriarchy as Inspiration for Art”  is included in the Panel: Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present Practices

We are delighted to be able to present  Mythica, an exhibition of new work by award winning photographer Lisa Levart, at our conference in April.

Since 2001, Lisa Levart has joined the rapidly growing Earth-centered, spirituality movement by traveling across America creating unique portraits of women. Her Goddess on Earth project draws deeply on ancient mythology to depict fiercely independent women and their personal experience of the divine feminine.

Lisa says,  “ I see the Divine in all the women I photograph, and I want to reflect that vision back to them.”

Ancient Techniques Reveal Goddesses on Earth.  In her new series, Mythica, Lisa connects the past and present in subject matter, style and technique, while furthering the themes of Goddess on Earth. Referencing vintage 19^th Century photographic processes and utilizing the 2000 year-old encaustic medium, the finished pieces illuminate feminist spiritualty and link old pre-patriarchal religions with women’s search for empowerment. Her subjects collaborate with the photographer, choosing what myth to portray and how to actualize its visual representation. Their evocative photographs are both an invitation to witness and engage with what is timeless and archetypal.

For over a decade Lisa has presented Goddesses on Earth, a community specific photographic project, at many venues including art galleries, shopping malls, schools, theaters and community centers. She is currently a finalist in the International Julia Margaret Cameron Awards For Women Photographers and was awarded The Rockland County Executive Award in the Visual Arts. Since 2011, Levart has been a featured blogger for the Huffington Post, where her blogs explore the intersection between art, the divine feminine, women’s empowerment and current events. Lisa lives and works in Nyack, New York.