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Symposium Program for Portland

Pre-register by Friday, April 3, 2015!

We are so excited to see everyone at our April 11 Symposium in Portland! Symposium registration ends Friday evening, April 3. After April 3, registration can made on a walk-in basis at the Symposium on April 11. Lunch may not be able to be included for walk-in registrations. Register soon, and we will see you in Portland!

Your Room at the Red Lion Hotel on the River  (503) 283-4466

Please reserve your room right away to get our conference rate:  Red Lion Reservation Link

PROGRAM SCHEDULE AND ABSTRACTS

Our program is set for the 2015 Symposium. We are excited about the quality and variety of presentations—thanks to all of our presenters. See below for the list of panels and presentations and a PDF of Abstracts. . We are also happy to include pre-symposium events that will be of interest but are not organized by ASWM.

Check out the complete Schedule! 2015 Program Schedule

NEW:  Abstracts 2015  Alphabetical by author, summary of presentations

Friday 7:30 PM at Red Lion Hotel on the River

Special presentation by ASWM and Black Earth Institute

“Can the Blessed Virgin hold the heart of goddess women?” A Celebration and reading from Patricia Monaghan’s Mary:  A Life in Verse  with Michael McDermott

Saturday April 11, Registration 7:30 AM

Program 8:30 AM to 6:15 PM at Red Lion Hotel on the River

“Tales and Totems: Myth and Lineage in Goddess Scholarship” 

  • “Who Is Telling the Story? A Few Remarks on the Mythic Imagination” Keynote Presentation with Susan Griffin
  • ASWM Awards Ceremony:
  • Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts, to Women of We’Moon
  • Saga Special Recognition for Contribution to Women’s History, to Z Budapest 
  • “Goddess Lineage, Rituals and Community” with Z Budapest
  • “Huntress and Hearth: Artemis and Hestia and the Balance of Connection and Solitude in Group Experience”
  • “Sacred Presences in Secular Time: Myth and the Rebirth of the Old Goddesses of Europe” 
  • “Through Words, Pictures, Ceremonies: Feminist Spirituality and Cultural Identity”  
  • “Mother Earth: Fertile, Feminine and Feminist”
  • “In the beginning was the Goddess: The Devi of Speech, Perception and Embodiment” 
  • “Guidance at the Thresholds: Goddess Spirituality and the Myth of Journeys.”
  • “Destabilizing Gender, Decolonizing Place: Sacred Tales of Spirit Transformations” 
  • “Devotion, Death and Dynamism: The Many Faces of Mary Magdalene”
  • “Goddesses of the living Land: Oregon Women’s Lands, Wisdom Circles, and Living Goddess Cultures”
  • “Women Artists of We’Moon”

 AND STAY FOR  Sacred Shindig: A Sharing Time,  free and open to the public

Saturday night, April 11 7:30 PM at Red Lion Hotel on the River

hosted by Women of We’Moon

SACRED SHINDIG: A Sharing Circle

with Goddess play, Goddess stories, songs, jokes

and other shenanigans!

Wear your Sacred Garb!

Be ready for interactive surprises and

a Circle of Participatory Power

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2015 Keynote by Susan Griffin

SusanGriffin_DS

“Who Is Telling the Story? A Few Remarks on the Mythic Imagination”

The wondrous events and magic depicted in myth mirror the creative process of storytelling in countless ways. Using her own experience as a writer as well as that of other contemporary and classic writers and poets, Griffin will describe the often mysterious alchemical process by which words and rhymes, plots, turns of plots, characters, scenes and even whole landscapes enter the imaginary realm of the tale, a process which challenges many of the dualities engrained in modern consciousness. 

Susan Griffin  was born in Los Angeles California in 1943, in the midst of the Second World War and the holocaust, and these events had a lasting effect on her thinking. She draws deep connections between the destruction of nature, the diminishment of women, and racism, and she traces the causes of war to denial in both private and public life.   Her work moves beyond the boundaries of form and perception. She is known for her innovative style. Her groundbreaking book Woman and Nature, is an extended prose-poem that inspired the ecofeminist movement.

In A Chorus of Stones, the Private Life of War, Griffin blends history and memoir. Her most recent book, Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy, the Autobiography of an American Citizen  (published by Trumpeter books in April, 2008) explores the state of mind that engenders and sustains democracy.

Her “social autobiography,” A Chorus of Stones, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award, winner of the BABRA Award in 1992, and also a NY Times Notable Book of the Year. Her play Voices, which won an Emmy in 1975 for a local PBS production, has been performed throughout the world, including a radio production by the BBC.  In 2009 she was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Additionally, she has been named by Utne Reader as one of a hundred important visionaries for the new millennium.

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Registration for 2015 Symposium Is Now Open

At the link below you’ll find the registration pages for our 2015 Symposium.  You’ll be offered the chance to join when you register, giving you member rates for the event.  Please remember that if you have received confirmation that you are presenting, you must join ASWM in order to be part of the program.

Register here for 2015 “Tales and Totems:  Myth and Lineage in Goddess Scholarship”

And reserve your room  here:  Red Lion Hotel Reservation Link.

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Illustrations Needed!

How many times have you read a scholarly work that describes a design or artifact and said, “But what does it look like?” As publishers cut costs, illustrations are disappearing from books.  As scholars we’re left with half an idea, half an understanding. We can’t learn what we can’t see.

In other cases old photos are reproduced from previous editions, degraded to the point that they are almost meaningless.  Can you find anything useful in this repeatedly over-printed picture of the Matres at Bath?  Yet it appears in a book on Scottish folklore.

Matres_badPic

Miriam Robbins Dexter is co-author of the award-winning book Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia. This volume bucks the trend of modern publishing; it relies heavily on illustrations to advance its thesis. Miriam describes the issue this way:

Images greatly enhance scholarly books and articles, but it is essential that they be high quality.  Most good publishers will not accept fuzzy or low-pixel images.  It is possible to purchase excellent images from museums but those are quite expensive.  Crisp line drawings are not as expensive as museum copies, and they reproduce much better than poor quality photographs. Line drawings are an excellent means of rendering publishable images.

At ASWM, we want to be able to include quality images in our proceeding anthology. We are issuing this special call for donations to enable us to include artists’ original line drawings for the anthology. We will work directly with illustrators, rather than placing the burden on individual authors to find and hire artists.

At the same time we are working on the anthology, we can develop a resource that will have a long-term impact on scholarship. Among ASWM’s members are many visual artists; we plan to set up directory that would link them with authors in need of illustrations. Miriam says, “I applaud the idea of pairing authors with artists who can render excellent line drawings: it is an idea whose time has come.”

ASWM is in an ideal position to provide a service and enhance publication of scholarship. If you would like to help us with this project, please go to our Donations page. And watch our site and newsletter for updates on this important project.