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Course Criteria
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
This course is based in a belief in the importance of the growing movement for interfaith dialogues among the diverse religions of the world, as at the World Congress of Religions; and in the belief that these dialogues will benefit greatly with the inclusion of the voices from the Goddess traditions alongside those of the God traditions. The experience, wisdom, and beliefs of women in diverse spiritual-religious traditions will be explored for contrasts and critiques and especially for common ground, in order to construct a stronger basis for the equitable religious valuing of women and men, and a more just, peaceful, and sustainable future.
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
The most prestigious role a woman could hold in antiquity in the West was that of priestess. Using primary texts, iconography, epigraphical evidence, and secondary scholarship, we will look at what being a priestess entailed in ancient Greece. We will also explore how women in Greece more broadly participated in public and secret mystery practices that marked major life transitions, from puberty to death. Special emphasis will be given to the oracles at Delphi and Dodona, and the "divine birth" tradition. We will also examine how women today may lookto such ancient women's roles and practices to develop and reclaim spiritual authority, and toward that end we will integrate some ritual into the classroom experience.
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3.00 Credits
This course explores archeological and mythological evidence of the veneration of female deities in cultures of the ancient world within Africa, Old Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Middle East, Crete and Greece, Asia, and the New World. Slides from the collection of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas are a special resource for the class, providing an in-depth view of the iconography, social structure, and rich ceremonial life of the earliest farming peoples of Europe, Anatolia, and the Mediterranean. As a working framework of research and interpretation, we incorporate the worldview and methodologies of women's spirituality with archaeomythology, a methodology that combines archaeology, mythology, cultural history, ethnology, linguistics, genetics, and other disciplines to craft a multidimensional investigation of female iconography and rituals in the prehistoric eras.
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3.00 Credits
Through the millennia, women have crystallized our spiritual insights, longing, wisdom, and experiences of mystical communion with the Divine in prayers and poems, storytelling and novels. We will consider works by Isabel Allende, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Adrienne Rich, Mary Mackey, Susan Griffin, Alice Walker, Janine Canan, Audre Lorde, Linda Hogan, and Starhawk, among others, with guest speakers from among the local San Francisco Bay Area women's spirituality writers' community.
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
This course explores possibilities for philosophy with body and nature at the center. After a critique of the disembodied, disembedded assumptions within Western philosophy, the class will identify relevant post-mechanistic discoveries regarding (1) cosmological/quantum processes, (2) ecological processes (humans in nature, interactions with bioregions, interactions with animals), (3) interhuman dynamics, and (4) internal bodymind processes (with attention to the dimorphic nature of the human species, evidenced by new discoveries in female physiology). Finally, students will write a paper on reconceptualizing an issue in a selected branch of philosophy from a relational, processoriented perspective.
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3.00 Credits
Our human past and hopefully our future include a profound sense of the sacredness of both female and male, and all nature. Beginning in Mother Africa, we study the cultural evolution of religions, and the roles of women in the regions of the Near, Middle, and Far East; Old Europe and ancient Crete, Greece, and Rome; India, China, Japan; and the New World. We explore teachings about women's experiences and the relations of women, men, and children in Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Goddess traditions, and neo-pagan religions. The class concludes with individual visions for creating a 21st century closer to our heart's desires.
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1.00 - 2.00 Credits
While more people are starting to talk about body and spirit together, their larger context of politics and economics is still generally ignored. Drawing from Riane Eisler's cultural transformation theory, we explore how fundamental aspects of our lives are constructed very differently in a domination or partnership system. We look at both sexuality and spirituality from this new perspective; examine what a caring economics would look like; and investigate how the construction of gender and politics of the body are integrally connected to both national and international policies. We will form community connections as we share our own experiences, reflections, and future plans. The course is based on two of Eisler's books, Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body and The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics.
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3.00 Credits
Various topics.
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2.00 - 3.00 Credits
This feminist cultural history course studies the transformative legacy of primordial African migrations in the Mediterranean basin. Based on the on-site research of Lucia Birnbaum since 2001 in Italy, Spain, and France, the class explores the convergence of studies of women's spirituality with those of genetics, archaeology, and the African Diaspora. Students will conduct case histories of particular regions in Europe (students may choose any country in the world-African migrants reached every continent-for their research paper). Course topics includethe legacy of African migration paths such as water-healing rituals (e.g., Lourdes), heresies (e.g., Cathar heresy, Italian vernacular theology), egalitarian relationships (e.g., between African Muslims, Jews, and peasant Christians in medieval Spain); the cultural resistance to patriarchy by women along paths of African Amazons in Europe; our oldest mother and nonviolence movements; and nonviolent cultural and political transformation.
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1.00 - 3.00 Credits
Developed by internationally renowned somatics pioneer Marion Rosen, the Rosen Method allows us to access unconscious energies and patterns in new ways, to see connections between our emotions, posture, and the spiritual attitudes we carry. Effortless movement to music opens the breathing, lubricates the body's joints, stretches and strengthens muscles, and awakens an aliveness and enjoyment in the body. Relaxing hands-on work with chronic muscle tension invites the comfortable acceptance of one's body, dissolves mind-body dualism, and creates an opening for emotions to surface, which had been obscured within the holding patterns of the body.
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