“Rewriting Human Strength: What Female Biology Reveals About Survival, Performance, and Power”

with Starre Vartan

Thursday,  March 19, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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For centuries, we’ve been told a simple story: men are strong, women are weak. It’s a myth so deeply embedded in modern culture that it often feels like biological fact. But when we look closely at the science, that story begins to unravel. Yes, male bodies tend to excel at generating short bursts of upper-body power. But strength is far more complex than how much weight someone can bench press. When we expand our definition beyond visible muscle mass, a very different picture emerges—one grounded in physiology, evolution, and endurance.

The female body has remained remarkably consistent in its core design for tens of thousands of years. Across that time, it evolved not merely to reproduce, but to survive environmental stress, food scarcity, infection, migration, and physical strain. The result is a body built for durability.

Women mount faster and more robust immune responses to many pathogens. Female metabolism is metabolically flexible, allowing for more efficient fat utilization during sustained effort and greater protection during caloric stress. Women often demonstrate superior fatigue resistance and recovery in endurance contexts. Even heightened perceptual sensitivity—long dismissed as weakness—reflects neurological responsiveness that enhances environmental awareness and social cohesion.

This talk reframes strength as a multidimensional biological reality rather than a single performance metric. Drawing from evolutionary biology, physiology, and contemporary research, it reveals the adaptive advantages embedded in female bodies.  When we redefine strength, we don’t just update the science—we challenge a cultural narrative that has shaped medicine, sport, and social norms for generations—and how we understand history.

Starre Vartan writes about health & science, the natural world, and the female body—especially the parts that are strong, misunderstood, or totally ignored. Her science journalism and investigative reporting has been published in National Geographic, Scientific American, Slate, The Washington Post, Undark, New Scientist, and other outlets where curiosity—and research rigor—are job requirements. She’s also published essays in Aeon’s Psyche, Candidly, and in her newsletter, Palimpsest of Flesh, as well as short fiction.

Her second book, The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us About the Power of the Female Body (Seal Press/Hachette, July 2025), has been published in the US & Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and is forthcoming in China and Korea. It is a science-backed, myth-busting love letter to the female body—an exploration of the female body’s sensitivity, endurance, immunity, longevity, and more. In addition to her science writing, Starre is a 5Rhythms and ecstatic dancer, trailrunner and weightlifter, and a ceramicist of surrealist female goddesses. She splits her time between the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. and the Illawarra Coast south of Sydney, Australia, and grew up in New York. A dual citizen of the US and Australia, Starre has a Bachelors of Science in Geology from Syracuse University and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Columbia University. 

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“She Who Endures: Power, Politics, and the Iconography of Artemis of Ephesus”

with Dr. Carla Ionescu

Thursday,  March 5, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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In her latest book, She Who Endures: The Cult and Iconography of Artemis of Ephesus, Dr. Carla Ionescu reexamines one of the most misunderstood divine figures of the ancient Mediterranean. Far from being a regional curiosity or an anomaly within Greek religion, Artemis of Ephesus was a powerful, adaptive, and politically embedded goddess whose cult shaped civic identity, imperial diplomacy, and religious imagination for centuries.

This lecture explores how the Ephesian Artemis functioned simultaneously as city protectress, cosmic sovereign, and sacred embodiment of continuity. Drawing on archaeological evidence, temple dedications, imperial coinage, inscriptions, and sculptural programs, the talk traces how her distinctive iconography emerged and evolved across Archaic, Hellenistic, and Roman contexts. Particular attention will be given to the famous cult statue type and the symbolic language embedded in its form, including animal imagery, cosmic references, and ritual ornamentation.

Rather than treating Artemis of Ephesus as a deviation from the “Greek” Artemis, this presentation argues for theological continuity across her manifestations. The Ephesian goddess reveals how local tradition, Anatolian religious heritage, and Greek cult practice intertwined to produce a form of sacred authority that endured political change, imperial control, and shifting religious landscapes.

By examining the material record alongside literary testimony and civic history, this lecture invites us to reconsider how ancient communities constructed divine power, and how modern scholarship has often constrained it. Artemis of Ephesus did not simply survive history. She shaped it.

Dr. Carla Ionescu is an ancient historian and author specializing in Greek religion and Mediterranean cult traditions. She has taught at several Canadian universities and colleges, bringing over a decade of experience in both in-person and online instruction. Her research focuses on the material culture, sanctuaries, and evolving iconography of Artemis across the Mediterranean world. She is the author of She Who Hunts: Artemis, the Goddess Who Changed the World (2022) and She Who Endures: The Cult and Iconography of Artemis of Ephesus (2025). Her work combines archaeological evidence, inscriptions, literary sources, and site-based research to reconstruct how Artemis functioned within civic, political, and ritual life from the Archaic period through Late Antiquity.

Dr. Ionescu is also the founder of the Artemis Mapping Project, an ongoing digital initiative documenting sanctuaries and dedications to Artemis across the Mediterranean, Balkans, and Near East. Through public lectures, workshops, and field research, she works to make ancient material culture accessible to both academic and public audiences. Her current projects explore Artemis in relation to mountain traditions, animal sovereignty, and the broader religious networks of the ancient world.

 

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This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

 

“Let the Ancient Gods and Goddesses Organize Your Year“

with Dr.Normandi Ellis

Thursday,  February 19, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Across the ancient world, the Seven Sacred Planets were understood not as distant spheres of rock and gas, but as living intelligences—cosmic powers shaping destiny, consciousness, and your unfolding of life.  The five visible planets and the sun and moon ruled each day of the week. Used correctly, they provide inspiration for effectively engaging in our life tasks, performing the important activities of life at the right time. Not a HUGE astrological teaching, this talk will offer a simple way to look at and organize your daily/yearly calendar based on the intelligences of the planets.

Be sure to bring your planner and calendar to the talk!

Dr. Normandi Ellis is an ordained clairvoyant Spiritualist minister and priestess of Isis. She is also an astrologer, numerologist, and teacher of metaphysics in a number of venues online and in person. Her books include Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Union of Isis an Thoth: Magic and Initiatory Practices of Ancient Egypt, Hieroglypic Words of Power, and The Ancient Tradition of Angels. She leads trips to Egypt and trains other priestesses of Isis through her lyceum, Per Ankh Het Seshet. Normandi has been a member of ASWM’s Advisory Board since the beginning of our work. Visit her website for  more information on her trips and teachings.

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Upcoming Scholar Salons (3pm Eastern Time):

Thursday March 5, with Dr. Carla Ionescu: She Who Endures: The Cult and Iconography of Artemis of Ephesus

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

 

“Women of Ancient Western Asia and (Questioning) Their Stereotypes“

with Dr. Pinar Durgun

Thursday,  January 22, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Modern perceptions of women in ancient Mesopotamia (or ancient Western Asia) are often shaped by persistent stereotypes: that women were universally oppressed, legally invisible, and confined to domestic or sexualized roles. This talk explores how our understanding of ancient women’s lives shifts when we challenge these assumptions and examine evidence across legal, economic, religious, and visual sources. Each category of evidence carries its own biases, privileging certain narratives while silencing others.

While patriarchal structures shaped Mesopotamian society and law codes emphasized control and restriction, other sources reveal women owning and managing property, participating in economic transactions, and holding significant religious offices within temple and palace institutions. Rather than seeking a single “status of women” in Mesopotamia, this presentation highlights the variety of lived experiences shaped by class, historical period, and institutional context. By bringing these fragmented forms of evidence into conversation, the talk invites us to reconsider not only women in the ancient world, but also how women’s histories are constructed, obscured, and reclaimed through material culture and its study.

Dr. Pinar Durgun is an art-historically trained archaeologist with a strong background in anthropology. She has a Ph.D. in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University’s Joukowsky institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Her interests center around death and burial, image and identity making, materials and making in the ancient world. Her current research focuses on seals and seal making, and copies and copying in ancient Western Asia. With fifteen years of experience teaching and working in museums, Dr. Durgun is interested in how museums help us engage with the past and how they can better serve our communities today. She is currently the Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen Associate Curator and Department Head of Ancient Western Asian Seals and Tablets Department at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

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Upcoming Scholar Salons (3pm Eastern Time):

Thursday February 5, with Dr. Joan Marler,  Topic: the legacy of Marija Gimbutas

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

 

” The Gifts of the Magi Were Meant for the Mother“
with Laura Shannon
Thursday,  January 8, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

   Facebook Live Promo Interview on 1/5/26:

In the Christian Nativity story, the Magi brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, symbolising Christ’s kingship, divinity, and death. In this presentation, I suggest that the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were actually meant for the new mother, Mary. I will also consider the theory that the Magi were not only three, and were not only men, but may have included women healers and midwives among their number.

The original gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh – now preserved on Mt. Athos – take the form of gold filigree pendants and beads of blended frankincense and myrrh. These elements are now divided into smaller segments, but originally would have been joined together in one long loop, in the style of North African bridal necklaces of scented paste beads and flat gold filigree lockets.

The flat gold lockets were known as meskiyah, and were intended to contain fragrant substances. The beads, called skhab, are also powerfully fragrant, formed from resins and spices such as cloves and roses, or indeed frankincense and myrrh. These were ritually blended for a bride before her wedding in a custom which is still practiced today in North Africa.

With this and other artistic, iconographic, and medical evidence, I hope to shed light on indigenous value systems honouring mothers and childbirth, and to offer grounds for (re)placing the Holy Mother at the heart of the Nativity story, as the one for whom the sacred gifts were intended.

Laura Shannon has been researching and teaching traditional women’s circle dances worldwide for 40 years. With degrees in Intercultural Studies, Dance Movement Therapy, and Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, she is currently a PhD candidate researching the roots of women’s ritual dance. A faculty member of the Findhorn Foundation Sacred Dance Department since 1998, Laura is also Founding Director of the Athena Institute for Women’s Dance and Culture; Director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, following Carol Christ; and an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Sacred Dance Guild in recognition of her ‘significant and lasting contribution to dance as a sacred art’. Laura has published numerous articles and chapters on ritual dance in multiple languages, and as a musician and singer, has produced several recordings of traditional dance music. Laura lives in Greece and the UK.

See related article in Feminism and Religion

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Upcoming Scholar Salons (3pm Eastern Time):

Thursday January 22 “Women of Ancient Western Asia” “with Dr. Pinar Durgun

Thurday February 5, with Dr. Joan Marler, on the legacy of Marija Gimbutas

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.