Fellowship Deadline for OPUS Archives

Here’s a reminder for students in doctoral programs writing within the fields of depth psychology and mythology:  The Christine Downing FellowshipYou are eligible if your proposal and /or first two chapters of the dissertation has been accepted by your dissertation committee.  You must demonstrate that your work will be enriched by  in-depth use of the collections at OPUS for a significant amount of your research.

Deadline for proposals is June 30, 2012.  The fellowship will be awarded September 15, 2012.

For more information see the fellowship Announcement.

Treasures of San Francisco

One of our blessings in ASWM is the wonderful folks on our advisory board!  They often have wonderful resources to share.

In anticipation of the Matriarchal Studies Day (May 10) and our National Conference (May 11-12), Lydia Ruyle has assembled a guide to her favorite museums and sites in San Francisco.

Whether you can join us for the conference, or get to the Bay Area another time, check out this link:  San Francisco Treasures : ASWM 2012.

Thanks, Lydia, for sharing these resources with us all!

2012 Conference Schedule

Here at last is our conference schedule–subject to changes, of course, as life intervenes.  Come and join us for this exciting program, and don’t forget about the Matriarchal Studies Day which occurs the day before our conference.

Our unbelievably amazing  Schedule

“Goddesses” Performance at Conference


Goddesses—their stories often inspire us, well into the 21st century. But what happens to a modern woman when six Greek goddesses compete within her for control of her psyche?  How will she respond to the strong, assertive personalities of these archetypal divinities?  These are the questions posed in Dorotea Reyna’s play, Goddesses, based on the groundbreaking concepts found in Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen.

Goddesses premiered at the Festival of One Act Plays at Dominican University of California, and went on to be produced at the Live Oak Theatre in Berkeley, Mills College, and live on KPFA 94.1 on the radio drama program, Act One.

At the ASWM conference, Goddesses will be presented as a one-woman performance by the playwright.  Following the performance, there will be a panel discussion.  In alphabetical order the panelists are:

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of many books that explore women’s life passages, including Goddesses in Everywoman, Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, Goddesses in Older Women, Crones Don’t Whine and, most recently, Like a Tree.

Mara Lynn Keller, PhD (Philosophy, Yale University) is a Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a philosopher, thealogian, and specialist on the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. As director of the Women’s Spirituality graduate program from 1998-2008, she produced special events on women’s sacred arts and scholarship, including an art exhibition on Ineffable/Woman with CERES Gallery in New York.

Arisika Razak, RN, MPH is the Chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program at CIIS. For five years she co-chaired the Womanist-Pan African Section of the American Academy of Religion-Western Region, and she is a regular contributor books and journals. Her film credits include Fire Eyes, the first full length feature film by an African woman on female genital cutting; and the forthcoming Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth where she is interviewed on Alice Walker womanism.

Dorotea Reyna. MA, received her Bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University and her Master’s in English with a concentration in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin.  Her poetry has appeared in New Chicana/Chicano Writing published by the University of Arizona Press and in Imagining Worlds published by McGraw-Hill.  She has read her poetry in venues across the San Francisco Bay Area,and has been awarded two grants from the Marin Arts Council for her writing.

Featured Speakers for Conference: Ana Castillo

Ana Castillo is a Mexican-American Chicana novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. Her work centers on the essential issues of identity, race, gender, and class.

Dr. Castillo has won over twenty awards for literature, including the 1993 Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction (So Far From God) and the 2000 Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Commended Title My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, the Dove:  An Aztec Chant.  Castillo’s work explores Chicana feminism, which she names “Xicanisma.”

She edited Goddess of the Americas, a unique collection of personal affirmations for the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Her essays in The Massacre of the Dreamers are powerful correctives to the omission of Amerindian and Chicana women from political history in the US.  In the Fall of 2012 she will serve as Visiting Poet and Writer at Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT.