2024 S/HE Divine Studies Online Conference

2024 S/HE Divine Studies Online Conference

Theme: Why and How to Study the Female Divine
Dates: June 7-9, 2024 (Friday to Sunday)
Venue: Online Zoom meetings
Hosting Bodies: Mago Academy (https://magoacademy.org)
Allocated time for a session: 90 minutes

Greetings! S/HE Divine Studies Online Annual Conference is the newest project of the Mago Work to begin in 2024. Planning & Convening Board (PCB) Members include Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Dr. Helen Benigni, and Dr. Nane Jordan. All sessions are organized by volunteers including the co-conveners (Dr. Hwang, Dr. Jordan, and Dr. Benigni).

By “the S/HE Divine,” we mean the world-wide manifestations of the female/mother/matriversal divine (Goddesses, Motherhood, and the Creatrix) from the ancient to this day. In response to the call of our time, we intend to develop a collective consciousness to overcome and redefine the compartmentalized categories of women, mothers, nature, animals, the cosmos, and men as part of the whole. The S/HE Divine Studies refuses to remain isolated within mono-disciplinary confinements but actively seek to connect women/humans, matriarchies, motherhood, civilizations, and the Creatrix (Cosmic Mother). It is not enough to say, “Personal is political.” Personal is Political and Cosmic.

People & How We Started

Main Meeting
Theme: Why and How to Study the Female Divine
Dates: June 7-9, 2024 (Friday to Sunday)
Venue: Online Zoom meetings
Hosting Bodies: Mago Academy (https://magoacademy.org)
Allocated time for a session: 90 minutes

Topics but not limited to:
-Feminism and the Goddess
-The Female Divine and Matriarchy
-Motherhood and Thealogy
-Women, Goddess, and Nature
-Myth, History, and Culture of the Female Divine
-Matricentric Cosmogony and Cosmology
-Goddess and World Religions
-Pre-patriarchally-originated Gynocentric/Matricentric Traditions
-Methodology: Why and How to Study the Female/Maternal Divine
-Decolonizing Studies of the S/HE Divine
-Comparative approaches to one or more of the above topics

Gift-Sharing Workshops (Registration with fee required, TBA)
Venue: Online Zoom meetings
Allocated time for a session: 90 minutes
Format: A workshop, salon, a book launch, or a special format

Topics and mediums but not limited to:
– Feminist activism
– Matricentric advocacy
– Introduction of particular art, poetry, and literature on the S/HE Divine
– Matricentric calendars
– Celebration of major heras and heroes
– Focusing on a particular scholar/artist/writer whose work debunks patriarchal/capitalist/colonialist premisses

All inquiries should be emailed to Dr. Helen Hwang (magoacademy@gmail.com).

Meet the Planning & Convening Board Members

Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University), the co-founder of The Mago Work (Mago Academy, Mago Books, and Return to Mago E-Magazine), is a scholar, activist, and advocate of Magoism, the Way of the Great Mother. She earned her MA and Ph.D. in Religion with emphasis on Feminist Studies from Claremont Graduate University, CA. She also studied toward an MA degree in East Asian Studies at UCLA, CA. Hwang has taught for universities in California and Missouri, U.S.A. She co-edited and published the She Rises trilogy series(2015, 2016, and 2019) as well as Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess(Mago Books, 2017). Also authored The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia (Mago Books, 2015), Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendarannually since 2018, and The Budoji Workbook series since 2020.

Helen Benigni, Ph.D.

Helen Benigni (Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is a published author and a Full Professor 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, 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) incorporate the research findings of archeoastronomers to determine the myths associated with the cycles found on the ancient calendars of the Greeks and the Celts. Identifying the goddesses of the matri-local cultures of the ancients with the seasons represented by the lunar, solar and stellar bodies has been a major endeavor in the study of archetypes, with an emphasis on the feminine archetypes of the celestial realms. 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.

Nane Jordan, Ph.D.

Nané Jordan is a Goddess scholar, birth-keeper, artist-researcher, and community worker—dedicated to an artful, relational, spirited scholarly pathway for human thriving and wellbeing. She completed her PhD in Education (University of British Columbia), an MA in Women’s Spirituality (New College of California), and was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Paris 8, France, in Gender and Women’s Studies. Nané’s research focuses on women’s lives, feminist spirituality, goddessing, artistic practices and pedagogies, mothering, birth-giving, Mother Earth wisdom, and the maternal gift economy. She co-founded the women’s art collective Gestare (to carry in the womb), and publishes widely, including the anthologies: Placenta Wit: Mother Stories, Rituals, and Research, and Pagan, Goddess, Mother (Demeter Press). Nané lives on the West Coast of Canada with her husband and daughters.

Post-Conference Appendix to the Program Document