A fascinating introduction to one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the United States today. Through interviews, participant-observation, and analysis of movement literature, Cynthia Eller explores what women who worship the goddess believe; how they express those beliefs in private, in public, and in the political realm; and the place of feminist spirituality in the history of American religion.
Hillary Rodham Clinton tells her life story, describing her dedication to social causes, her relationship with her husband, and her accomplishments and difficult periods as First Lady.
This book is a biography and reception history of the Lithuanian–American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994). It presents the first transnational account of Gimbutas’ life based on historical research, and an original examination of the impact of her ideas in various feminist contexts, both academic and popular. At the core of this book is a success story of an Eastern European woman who survived both Soviet and Nazi occupations of her homeland, lived as a displaced person in postwar Germany, and built her career and scholarly authority within the androcentric American academia. At the same time, it is also a story of a controversy, which followed Gimbutas’ theory of Old Europe – a prehistoric civilization, characterized by peacefulness, egalitarianism, women’s leadership, and the worship of the Great Goddess. First introduced in 1974, this theory inspired women’s movements worldwide, but was harshly criticized by other archaeologists. This book examines the various intellectual contexts (feminist, nationalist, theoretical) in which Gimbutas’ ideas were formed, received, and interpreted, as well as appropriated for different political goals. This timely study will appeal to scholars and students in the following fields: history of archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, gender studies, feminist studies, women’s history, Baltic studies, and religion and spirituality.
Critical analysis of the dramatisation of homosexuality in British fiction about the Second World War is noticeable only by its relative absence from the field. Whereas feminist literary criticism has broadened the canon of war fiction to include narratives by and about women, queer scholars have seldom focused on literary representations of homosexuality during the war. Natalie Marena Nobitz closes a glaring gap in the critical attention of four novels dealing with the disruption of gender roles and institutionalised heteronormativity: Walter Baxter's Look Down in Mercy (1951), Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1953), Sarah Waters' The Night Watch (2006) and Adam Fitzroy's Make Do and Mend (2012).
Enhance Your Connection to the Goddess through Historical Writings & Hands-On Rituals Who is the Goddess and how did she become the iconic figure we know today? Queen of All Witcheries explores the mythology of the Goddess through a historical lens, introducing you to influential voices that shaped the modern Goddess movement, including Charles Godfrey Leland, Margaret Murray, Dion Fortune, and Gerald Gardner. Jack Chanek examines classic titles that build upon each other, like The Golden Bough and The White Goddess, showing how they impacted our contemporary understanding of the Goddess. Each chapter includes a solitary ritual, a group ritual, and a hands-on exercise to deepen your devotional experience. You will reenact the witches' esbat, light a divinatory ritual bonfire, make flying ointment, and more. Sharing extensive research and his own experiences, Jack provides you a richer understanding of the goddess and her evolving mythology.
The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie “A picaresque roller coaster of a story, with staggering amounts of sex and drugs and the perpetual quest to retain some kind of artistic integrity.”—The New York Times In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment. It may feel like Disney World now, but in The History of Bones, the East Village, through Lurie’s clear-eyed reminiscence, comes to teeming, gritty life. The book is full of grime and frank humor—Lurie holds nothing back in this journey to one of the most significant moments in our cultural history, one whose reverberations are still strongly felt today. History may repeat itself, but the way downtown New York happened in the 1980s will never happen again. Luckily, through this beautiful memoir, we all have a front-row seat.
Contemporary distinctions between religion and spirituality can often be traced to rebellion against hierarchical institutions with biases towards women and minorities that constrain individual freedom. This opposition is carefully addressed in this volume, with greater attention paid to gender and power in the context of contemporary spirituality and how these relate to the distinction between religion and spirituality.
