Welcome to the NWSA
Feminist Spirituality Interest Group

Feminist Spirituality Interest Group Report
Oakland, 2006
by Nancy Lynn Ivey and Suzann Robins

This was a first NWSA conference for both of us. Our interests in ecofeminism, social science and spirituality led us to the Feminist Spirituality Interest Group. Nancy completed her thesis “An Ecofeminist Appreciation of Yoga” at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and Suzann teaches a variety of social science classes at Hesser College in Manchester, NH.
Current feminist scholarship is exploring the diverse intersections of race, class, and gender with religion, spirituality, social justice and activism. FSIG focuses its work on making visible the intersections of feminism, religion and spirituality within Women’s Studies at NWSA. The FSIG was responsible for three areas within the conference: a roundtable, business meeting, and community ritual.

FSIG roundtable: L-R seated: Louise Pare, Moderator; Arisika Razak, Deborah Grenn, Judy Grahn, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Dianne Jenett and (standing, in white) Elinor Gadon (founder of CIIS graduate Women's Spirituality Program).

Roundtable: Our FSIG roundtable was titled: Locating Women’s Spirituality: Formations of Cultural Transformation, Power and Resistance. Faculty members from the Women’s Spirituality graduate programs at CIIS and New College of California discussed varied expressions of women’s spirituality education, scholarship and activism. Presenters and topics included: Judy Grahn, Ph.D., Metaformia: an online journal amplifying metaformic theory; Dianne Jenett, Ph.D., Organic Inquiry, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Ph.D. the mutual relevance of women’s spirituality studies and black afrocentric studies; Susan Carter, Ph.D. the politics and pedagogy of women’s spirituality as a model for culturally sensitive education for the 21st century; Deborah Grenn, Ph.D. and Arisika Razak, M.A., diverse examples of women’s spirituality research which demonstrate how women’s spiritual traditions inform and motivate women’s activism for social change. Louise Pare, Ph.D., co-chair of the FSIG, moderated the roundtable

Business Meeting: The Friday afternoon business meeting led by Louise Pare began with a ritual of introduction which revealed interesting connections between new and returning members, i.e., four of the twelve women present had separately visited sacred sites in Sicily! Louise shared the her-story of FSIG’s past eleven years of work in NWSA. We brainstormed ideas for panels and presentations at next year’s conference in Chicago.

Summer Solstice Ritual:
L-R: Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Nane Jordan, Allyson Richard, Louise Pare, Lynn Carol Henderson, Liz Fischer

Summer Solstice Ritual: Sixty women participated in a ritual on Friday night designed by Lynn Carol Henderson and led by Lynn Carol and Louise. Entitled “Nurturing Energy in Ourselves and in the World: Summer Solstice Ritual” the ritual used a feminist neo-pagan format. The room was decorated with colorful paintings from Lynn Carol’s “Wheel of the Year” series depicting sacred days in the earth’s cycle. During the participatory ritual we invoked the names of our mothers and grandmothers, released into the fire everything negative we were ready to let go of, and then affirmed what we wanted to harvest in the coming year. We offered bread and juice to each other saying “May you never hunger,” and “May you never thirst.” The ritual closed with a circle dance.
Networking: A total of 18 papers, 4 roundtables, 9 panels, 2 posters and 8 films explored FSIG themes. Examples included the panel “The Spiritual is Political is Scholarly: Teaching Women’s Spirituality in the Academy” and a dynamic slide presentation “Female Shamans in Indigenous Resistance Movements: Women’s Spiritual Leadership Confronts Empire” (Max Dashu, Independent Scholar). This body of work makes clear that Feminist Spirituality is a force for political and cultural transformation.