ASWM members are a widely varied group.  Some of us are well-established academic scholars, some are independent researchers with no support, and some are students trying to find an audience for subjects close to their hearts.

Likewise, some of us are in the boomer generation, while others, thankfully, are much younger and more likely to be computer savvy.

But any of us who do not know how to effectively share our work online are at a disadvantage these days.  We can’t grow our work if we can’t find others who are interested in learning from us and teaching us.

So we’re pleased to offer a conference session this year that we’re calling ”Skills for Scholars,” in which we give you a tutorial on wordpress blogging (it’s a free platform) and discuss effective use of social media to promote and develop your work.  We’ll also give you a peek into the member section of the new ASWM site, where you will be able to interact with other scholars all year round.

Bring your laptop and join us for this low-threat session with Alexis Martin at our 2014 conference!

Borderlands:  Scholarship as Pilgrimage and Mystery

The program for 2014 truly lives up to the promise to explore the borderlands and mysteries of mind and spirit.  Our conference this year follows tracks laid down in prior years, and also offers new topics and interest areas as we grow.  We continue to offer topics such as place wisdom, literature, folklore, and matriarchal studies.  Thanks to the talents of many presenters, we have added Native American scholarship, animal mysteries,  Black Madonnas, and gender myth to our 2014 schedule.

(There’s still time to register–join us in San Antonio for scholarship, arts, and community.)

Horses have been a part of human history and cultures all over the world for thousands of years. Most cultures have religious or mythological traditions/stories related to horses. Jungian or archetypal psychology asserts that because of our long relationship history horses can have deep symbolism for many people. Both the imaginal (symbolic) and the presence of physical horses create a powerful opportunity for insight and psychological growth.

We are pleased to announce a post-conference workshop being offered by psychologists Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett and Joe Lancia.  Expanding on the idea of their Horse Mysteries panel, they have arranged an experiential workshop at an area stable.  In this workshop, you’ll work with the archetypes of Chiron, the Wounded Healer, and Epona, the feminine principle of movement between spirit and physical realms.

This workshop is about inter-species communication and relationships—not about riding horses! (You’ll keep your feet on the ground, and no previous experience is necessary.) The workshop fee of $65 includes transportation from and back to El Tropicano on the River Walk.  See  Horses as Myths ASWM 2014 for a complete workshop description, and ASWM Horse Workshop Registration here.

Space is limited and pre-registration is required!

To register and pay by check or credit card please contact Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett at  info@equulibrium.org

ASWM is delighted to announce that Laura Fragua-Cota will be a conference keynote speaker for Saturday, March 29th.

Laura Fragua-Cota is a noted Southwestern artist with many awards and exhibitions to her credit, among them, the Patrick Suazo-Hinds Award at Santa Fe Indian Market, a Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (New Mexico’s highest arts honor), and the 2013 Pueblo Of Isleta Award of Excellence:  Honoring the Talents of Pueblo Arts and Culture.  Her work has been exhibited in places as varied as the New Mexico State Fair and the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Art in Russia.

She speaks through many of the “languages of art” creating through words, movement, and both two- and three-dimensional pieces.  Her images of life in the Pueblo Indian villages are inspired by deep connection to her communities, her sense of place, and her knowledge of their ceremonial life which celebrates the cycles and seasons.

The image of corn is prevalent in her work because of its centrality both as symbol and as major crop in her village.  Cornmeal offerings as daily prayer in the home and the fields of corn that are planted in the surrounding countryside together feed body and soul.

As she says, Corn “has been and will always be one of the many ‘Mothers’ that care and nurture all her children.”

Growing up in the Jemez Pueblo in central New Mexico, Laura Fragua-Cota always wanted to be an artist but was initially discouraged because it was not deemed a practical aspiration.  She hold degrees both in Art and in Art Therapy.  She paints and sculpts using both limestone and alabaster, creating works both abstract and more traditional.

She says, “In my art, as in my heart, there is a marriage of the traditional and the contemporary.  As an artist, a woman, and a Native American, my eyes are focused inside on what I feel and outside on what I perceive to be the realities of today. Each day of my life I thank the Creator for it has been a blessing to be able to share my vision through various media.”

Imagination, authenticity, creativity, spirituality, divinity, archetypes and symbols, dreams and synchronicities emerge from and take us into the borderlands of liminal experiences—limen is Latin for “threshold.” Borderlands connotate wilderness and transition zones. Borderlands can also be represented by the almond shaped mandorla formed by two overlapping circles in the vesica piscis. In this keynote, Jean Shinoda Bolen will serve as a guide to the borderlands—where creativity emerges. Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, Ring of Power and Goddesses in Everywoman came out of unexpected borderland experiences. To write from soul invites synchronistic help.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD. Is a Jungian analyst, psychiatrist, feminist, internationally known author and speaker and principal advocate at the UN for the 5th World Conference on Women. She was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at University of California San Francisco and is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She is the author of thirteen books (including Atalanta: the Indomitable Spirit of Artemis, fall 2014 pubdate) in 85 foreign translations and has contributed to 24 anthologies. Her most recent books,The Millionth Circle, Urgent Message from Mother, and Like a Tree bring activism and archetypes together.  To learn more about her work, see jeanbolen.com