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York U. Millennial Wisdom Symposium: Do Women Make a Better World?
This free event is the fourth in the ongoing Millennial Wisdom Symposium organized by York University's Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies along with the Royal Ontario Museum. The symposium, which talks about the way we recreate the past in contemporary culture is the brainchild of Susan Swan, novelist and York's Robarts Millennial Scholar, and Daniel Drache, director of the Robarts Centre.
"I wanted to get novelists, archeologists and historians thinking out loud together about what they've learned from looking at the past," said Swan. "So far it's been the women speakers who've had their lives transformed by recent social and political changes who are more optimistic about how knowledge of the past can help shape the new millennium." Swan believes the past is a novel with many different authors, but only one or two of its authors finds a publisher. "This week we're focusing on the lesser known feminine past, going back as far as the ancient Minoan society in Crete, which some archeologists believe worshipped a female deity," said Swan.
British historian and novelist Rosalind Miles will be talking about what will remain the same for women and what will be different in the new millennium. Miles is the author of the witty The Women's History of the World and the just published novel Guenevere, written from the point of view of the queen of Camelot. Miles is a powerhouse of feminine style and academic achievement, a writer of numerous books and articles on subjects ranging from the power of the Queen of England to the politics of Oman. She studied English at Oxford University, holds a Ph.D from the Shakespeare Institute at Birmingham, U.K., and an MA from the Centre for Mass Communication Research at the University of Leicester.
Carol P. Christ, US feminist thealogian and a seminal figure in the late Twentieth Century goddess movement will discuss how researching Minoan culture affected her as a woman and as a religious thinker. She will also present her nine touchstones or ethics for the new century, which include principles like -- "Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations." Christ is director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual. A full-time resident of Greece since 1988, she leads a Goddess pilgrimage to Crete every spring and fall. She is the author of Rebirth of the Goddess, a thealogy inspired by the archeologist Gimbutas, who Christ believes uncovered evidence of goddess worship and a language of the goddess in Old Europe (6500-3500 B.C.E.). Christ's other books include Odyssey with the Goddess, Diving Deep and Surfacing, and Laughter of Aphrodite. She has a Ph.D in religious studies from Yale.
Susan Jamieson, an archeologist at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, will discuss excavating the homestead of Ontario pioneer and literary personality Susannah Moodie. She will also reflect on how her research into the feminine past has affected her as an archeologist and a woman.
The November 24th event at the ROM will be hosted by Swan and Lyn Hamilton, who writes archeological mystery novels and is the author of The Xibalba Murders and The Maltese Goddess. There will be a follow-up reading on November 25 at 5 p.m. with Christ, Miles, Swan and Hamilton at York University's Vanier College. At this reading, Lyn Hamilton will discuss the influence on her work of feminist scholars such as York University professor Johanna Stuckey, as well as the late Dr. Marije Gimbutas, an archeologist who studied Old Europe. The event on the 25th is sponsored by York's Centre for Feminist Research, Vanier College and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, and will be held in the Vanier College Dining Hall, York University, Keele Campus, 4700 Keele St.
A book launch for Carol Christ and Rosalind Miles will be held at 6 p.m., November 26 at the Toronto Women's Bookstore for those who want to meet the authors.
The next symposium event on January 11 at the York University Bookstore, Excavating the Other: Writing about a culture or gender that isn't your own, features award-winning novelists Karen Connelly and Tomson Highway.
The public is invited to all events, which are free. The York University events will be held in the York University Bookstore, which is located at the north end of York Lanes, except for the March 21st Robarts lecture which will be held in York's Senate Chamber. For a complete agenda of events, please visit http://www.robarts.yorku.ca or contact the people below.
For more information, please contact:
Sine MacKinnon
Prof. Susan Swan, Chair |
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