2017 Schedule
Event Title
Spirituality and Social Justice: An Integral View
Location
Room 306
Start Date
21-4-2017 3:45 PM
End Date
21-4-2017 5:15 PM
Description
In this roundtable, we invite participants to collectively envision how spirituality and social justice can come together to address our current world challenges. We will draw upon integral methods of imagination, deep listening, and open-hearted awareness to create a space of creativity and reflection. This transformative dialogue will allow participants to deepen their understanding of how individual, societal, and global change are connected.
Event Type
Interactive Session
Spirituality and Social Justice: An Integral View
Room 306
In this roundtable, we invite participants to collectively envision how spirituality and social justice can come together to address our current world challenges. We will draw upon integral methods of imagination, deep listening, and open-hearted awareness to create a space of creativity and reflection. This transformative dialogue will allow participants to deepen their understanding of how individual, societal, and global change are connected.
Comments
Roundtable Discussion- facilitated by the Women’s Spirituality Program: Alka Arora, Mara Keller, Annette Williams
Dr. Alka Arora is core faculty in the Women's Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds a PhD in Women Studies from the University of Washington, where her dissertation examined spiritual discourses among third-wave feminists in Seattle. Her teaching and research interests focus on decolonial feminist spirituality, integral pedagogy, and vegan ecofeminism. Some of the courses that Alka teaches include “Spiritual Activism and Transformative Social Change,” “Liberation Dharma: Gender, Buddhism, and Social Justice,” and “Sacred Lineages: Goddesses, Foremothers, and Activists.”
Mara Lynn Keller, PhD (Philosophy, Yale University) is a Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Women’s Spirituality. As Program Director of Women’s Spirituality at CIIS from 1998-2008, she produced dozens of special events on women’s sacred arts and scholarship, most recently, a joint art exhibition with CERES Gallery in New York on Ineffable/Woman. She is a philosopher, thealogian, and specialist on the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. Her articles include “The Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries,” “Ancient Crete of the Earth Mother Goddess: Sacred Arts and Communal Ritual;” “Goddesses around the World,” "Violence against Women and Children in Religious Scriptures and in the Home," and “Women’s Spirituality and Higher Education.” She believes that “Freedom of Religion to worship Goddess is a social justice issue,” a message she delivered to the Parliament of the World’s Religions at the Women’s Plenary in 2015. Her articles can be found at http://www.ciis.edu/faculty-and-staff-directory/mara-lynn-keller.
Annette Lyn Williams, Ph.D. is chair and core faculty in the Women’s Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Religion with specialization in Women’s Spirituality as well a master’s degree in psychology with an emphasis in Jungian and archetypal approaches. Research interests have centered on healing from sexual trauma at the level of the soul that involves reclamation of the powerful erotic (à la Audre Lorde) and libidinal energies (à la Jung) suppressed by assault. Her dissertation takes up the theme of women’s spiritual power and agency within the Yorùbá Ifá tradition, with specific reference to the primordial feminine authority of àjẹ́. She collaborated on the compilation of She is Everywhere! An Anthology of Writing in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality Vol. 2 and is currently co-editing a Motherline anthology.