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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
This course offers a personal, multicultural, and womanist exploration of the spiritual gifts, liberatory struggles, embodied experiences, cultural roles, and collective and individual resilience found in women around the world. Using readings drawn from science and medicine, psychology, feminism, women's spirituality, Earth-based spiritual traditions, and the writings of women of color, we will review and re-envision the basic themes of female embodiment: woman and nature; growth and maturation; illness, disability, death and dying; sexual diversity, abuse, and healing; and menarche, childbirth, and menopause. We will use the sacred arts of ritual, writing, sound, and movement to weave a safe container to hold our own stories of descent, healing, and transformation.
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3.00 Credits
The main purpose of this online portal course for M.A. and Ph.D. students is to deepen students' knowledge of the established and emerging concepts, practices, and ideals of contemporary women's spirituality through embodied and experiential learning activities, as well as more traditional academic study and scholarship. Women's spirituality is a growing movement informed by many individuals and diverse belief systems around the world. It is also a growing field of interdisciplinary and integrative academic study. Students are invited to embody course material through participation in experiential exercises that include visualization, meditation, journaling, movement, and altar building (on a solo basis with reflective sharing with class members). Each student will explore and research her mother-line heritage.
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3.00 Credits
This womanist-feminist course explores the lineage of sacred women of power found in the cultural history, spiritual practices, feminine iconography, and ordinary and extraordinary rituals of diverse peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora. Beginning with the late Paleolithic and early Neolithic cave paintings of northern and southern Africa, extending through the goddesses, divine queens, and holy priestesses of the ancient kingdoms in North, West, and Central Africa, and continuing with the sacred ancestors, holy mothers, ritual leaders, healers, and market women of the Yoruba, Ibo, San, and other African peoples, we will explore the similarities and differences exhibited in images, practices, and concepts of the African Divine Feminine. Luisah Teish, contemporary author, actress, Ifa priestess and chief, will lead us in embodied practices drawn from a variety of ancient and modern African traditions, and inspire us with her personal knowledge and expertise. Contemporary writings, novels, films, and scholarly narratives will be used to review modern controversies in African women's empowerment, rituals, roles and feminism. Time permitting, the class may include a field trip to a contemporary spiritual festival that honors an African deity.
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
This course is a personal, experiential, and multicultural exploration of historic and contemporary sacred dance traditions. It does not require dance experience or aptitude-just the desire to move together in a safe space. We will review the movements and world views of selected African and Asian dance traditions, the praise dance tradition of the modern black Christian church, and contemporary dance practices that invoke and embody Spirit. The class will include group movement and lecture demonstrations led by master teachers who will reflect on their specific dance traditions and the use and performance of these traditions in contemporary times.
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3.00 Credits
This class offers a personal, multicultural, feminist exploration of women's health issues. We begin with a review of female anatomy and physiology, followed by an examination of diverse cross-cultural, trans-historic notions regarding the innate health, illness, and normalcy of the female body. The class explores the marginalization of women's health issues within dominant socio-cultural or scientific frameworks and their implications for health policy and planning. Readings drawn from science and medicine, feminism, psychology, and the writings and literature of women of color, along with the student's own experience, will be used to review topics and controversies in contemporary women's health, such as the following: reproductive health rights; women, cancer, and environmental pollution; health issues and inequities among socially marginalized female populations; local and global violence against women; women's roles in scientific and biological health fields; complementary, alternative, and integrative health care for women; social and ethical issues of the new reproductive technologies; menstruation, childbirth, aging, and menopause; and body image and eating disorders. The class includes a visit to a local health facility.
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3.00 Credits
M.A. students are mentored in the preparation of a portfolio or advanced research project. Students draw together the knowledge, insights, and skills of their coursework and especially their chosen area of emphasis, work with the library to refine their research skills, and review relevant methodologies and issues of epistemology in preparation for the completion of the M.A. degree.
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0.00 - 3.00 Credits
Thesis/Dissertation Proposal Completion
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2.00 - 3.00 Credits
Recent studies in cognitive science, including MRI comparisons, as well as decades of research in psychology, have demonstrated that most female brains tend to register and process information in a more gestalt, associative, relational mode than do most male brains. A few women writers have focused on the challenge of expressing female consciousness (cognitive patterns) as authentic female voice on the page. We will study feminist literary analyses, as well as fiction by three pioneers (Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield), and works by several contemporary authors of short stories, novels, spiritual writing, and poetry.
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
This course explores the work of several well-known contemporary female sculptors and painters who create organic form and engagement as their primary expression. The work will be situated in the history of organic art within the history of modern and contemporary art. The works engage with body, nature, biological abstraction, and ecological dynamics, as well as an implicit spiritual dimension. Various aspects of female subjectivity will be discussed.
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
This is an experiential class exploring traditional and contemporary sacred music from various cultures with a focus on women's expressions-including traditions of chant, song, shamanistic healing, women drummers, ecstatic practices, and contemporary explorations. The class is an exploration of the power of music to heal, create, and strengthen community, tell the story of a people, and connect to the divine.
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