Book review

Advanced Research Methodologies journaling

Posted onSunday 16 September 2012Saturday 15 September 2012

I dedicated most of this week to (amongst other things) catching up on the readings for this class, so I could start on the required reflection paper as soon as possible. Here are the readings to date for all those intellectual sadists who are following along: Chapter 1 of Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber & Patricia Lina…

More on Griffin’s “Woman & Nature”

Posted onMonday 3 September 2012Sunday 27 January 2013

Susan Griffin’s ecofeminist book Woman & Nature: The Roaring Inside Her is considered ground-breaking in the field. Written in 1978 in a poetic and then-uniquely female “voice,” it was one of the first — if not the actual first — text which traced a clear textual-historical connection between patriarchal use/abuse, and conflation, of women and…

Journaling while reading Griffin’s “Woman & Nature”

Posted onFriday 31 August 2012Sunday 27 January 2013

Later edit: I’ve been informed I wasn’t clear regarding this posting — sorry! I should have said what I am describing, in my comments below, is a collection of quotes of other sources put together by Griffin, the book’s author, to show the state of the world as far as women and nature are concerned…

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! :-D

Posted onThursday 9 August 2012

-EEEEEEEEEE!! I am SO EXCITED my books arrived today! I have now officially published scholarly work, yay! Wheee! This is so nifty! Along with several sister scholars from CIIS, I have two articles in the beautiful new little anthology Unto Herself: A Devotional Anthology for Independent Goddesses which was put out by Bibliotheca Alexandrina and…

The Eternity Artifact

Posted onTuesday 17 May 2011

Here there be dragons… and plot spoilers! Proceed at your own risk. :) I’m struggling through getting final papers written, and my brain needed a break… so I did a quick review of L. E. Modesitt, Jr.’s The Eternity Artifact to clear my head. Whew! I needed that. Now, back to work! ;) ~ *…

A Short History of Myth, part 4

Posted onThursday 14 April 2011Tuesday 12 April 2011

Source material that is simply bad To be fair to Armstrong, I would assume much of her previously mentioned double standards arose from her source material. I do not know why she chose to lean so heavily on such dated and inaccurate material for a book written in 2006. I do not refer here to…

A Short History of Myth, part 3

Posted onWednesday 13 April 2011Tuesday 12 April 2011

This darkly pessimistic view on goddesses is most exemplified in Armstrong’s version of the myths of Inanna. I’ve had the pleasure of reading some rather good translations of these myths, translations which scholars themselves laud. Inanna, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, Love and War, is clearly a goddess of life, death, and rebirth, moving…

A Short History of Myth, part 2

Posted onTuesday 12 April 2011Tuesday 12 April 2011

Blatant and inaccurate double standards As I’ve previously noted, I was not happy with how the second chapter was progressing. To my increasing dismay, things only got worse: we are introduced to the so-called original “High God” or “Sky God” of the “ancient Mesopotamians, Vedic Indians, Greeks and Canaanites,” which is a “primitive monotheism” Armstrong…

A Short History of Myth, part 1

Posted onMonday 11 April 2011Sunday 10 April 2011

The first book by Karen Armstrong which I read was A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It was absolutely amazing to me — chock-full of new ideas, fascinating religious philosophy, and beautiful writing. Since then I have read a few others as well by Armstrong, and I was delighted…

James Lord’s “A Giacometti Portrait”

Posted onSaturday 2 April 2011

This was a quick one-page paper written for one of my classes, which has a wonderful name: “Tree of Brilliant Fruit: Finding Spiritual Wisdom Through the Arts.” I’m sharing the paper here because the book was interesting, I’m open to other folks’ interpretations, it’s fun, and I like sharing writing. I can probably come up…