Creatrix studies program Faculty
Program Faculty
founder
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.
Dr. Hwang is the founder of Mago Academy and the field of Creatrix Studies. She is a born poet, student, and advocate for Life of ALL and has encountered Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of the Creatrix) through her doctoral research on Mago, the Cosmic Mother/Creatrix. Dr. Hwang received an M.A. and a Ph.D. degrees in Religion with the emphasis on Women’s Studies. To support her research on Magoism (the Way of the Creatrix), she enrolled in an M.A. program in East Asian Studies and specialized in Korean Buddhism. Authored, edited, and published many books and essays by Mago Books and the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, and Return to Mago E-Magazine.
founding faculty
Judy Grahn, Ph.D.
Judy Grahn, Ph.D., is an internationally known poet, writer, and cultural theorist. An early LGBT activist, she is also a foremother of women’s spirituality, and a professor who co-directed MA programs at two colleges in the Bay Area. She has published seventeen books and received many awards, including a Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award for literature and social activism, a Pen Oakland award for excellence in literary criticism, two American Book awards, and two awards from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. An award in her name, “The Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award,” was established in 1996 by Triangle Publishers.
Founding faculty
Nane Jordan, Ph.D.
Dr. Nané Jordan is a Creatrix Studies scholar, birth-keeper, interdisciplinary artist and educator, with a background in lay midwifery and community social work. Nané’s eco-birthing scholarship is rooted in maternal wisdom traditions of birth, where her work on mother-led, ecstatically-oriented, physiologic birth and the maternally gifting role of placentasadvances new understandings of birth in experience and care as central to human thriving. Nané was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Paris 8, France. She received her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of British Columbia, and an MA in Women’s Spirituality from New College of California. Nané facilitates community women’s circles and co-founded the artist collectives Gestare and Ma Whales. Her publications include Placenta Wit: Mother Stories, Rituals, and Research.
founding Faculty
Helen Benigni, Ph.D.
Helen Benigni (Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is a published author and Professor Emerita in English at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia. For several decades, Helen has been teaching classes in Comparative Mythology with an emphasis on Goddess studies. Her books are The Myth of the Year (University Press of America, 2003), The Goddess and the Bull (University Press of America, 2007), and The Mythology of Venus (University Press of America, 2013). Helen’s research with the Hellenic Studies Center in Washington D.C., her many trips to ancient sites, and her collaborative efforts with scholars in mythology, astronomy, archeology, and art have led to her discovery of the presence of the Goddess in the night sky and the continued renewal of the Goddess in contemporary times.
founding Faculty
Kaarina Kailo, Ph.D.
Dr. Kaarina Kailo is a cosmopolitan activist, politician, self-made artist and researcher. She has worked as professor of Women’s Studies at Oulu University, Finland, at the Finnish Academy, and has held women’s studies positions at Concordia University, Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Canada. She has published hundreds of articles on the gift economy/imaginary, Bear and Great Mother Worship/mythology, the woman who married the bear, sauna and sweat lodge healing, Finno-Ugric ecomythology, modern matriarchal studies, healing from gendered violence, Jungian philosophy, on the gender impact of neoliberal austerity politics, ecofeminism, goddess mythology, Finno-Ugric mythology, gender and Kalevala, Indigenous worldview/theory, Northern women’s culture and literature, societies of peace (matricultures), Jungian and Freudian theories of creativity, anti-racist theory and practices, gender and future studies.
