Author: joanna

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The Mythologium welcomes our keynote speaker, Dr. Safron Rossi

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Safron Rossi will deliver the keynote speech at the Fates and Graces Mythologium. Read on for more, and register today to reserve your spot.

In Ananke’s Lap: Finding Beauty Through the Mythic Perspective

To invoke the Fates and Graces means reflecting on the twin themes of necessity and beauty in the mythic perspective. If we open up to what Hillman called ‘archetypal necessity,’ personified by the goddess Ananke who was mother of the Fates, we invite more grace into our lives. We learn to be graceful — supple, agile and receptive — by being more attuned to the deep patterns of the psyche and cosmos, and myth is what helps us do this.

Safron Rossi, Ph.D., is Associate Core Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies MA/PhD program, teaching courses on mythology, archetypal symbolism, and research. For many years she was the Curator at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell and James Hillman manuscript collections. Her writing and scholarly studies focus on Greek mythology, archetypal psychology, astrological studies, alchemy, goddess traditions, and feminist studies. Safron is editor of Joseph Campbell’s Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (2013), and co-editor with Keiron Le Grice of Jung on Astrology (2017). Safron has published articles in Jungian, Archetypal, and astrological journals and lectures across the US and internationally in Europe, Brazil and Australia. 

You can connect with Safron through her website, www.thearchetypaleye.com, and on Instagram.

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The Mythologium welcomes Dr. Dori Koehler

Dori’s presentation is titled, “Roger’s Labors: The Resonance of Eros and Psyche in Outlander”

In his seminal work Amor and Psyche, Erich Neumann suggests that Psyche’s story offers a key to understanding the process of coming to know and fall in love with one’s own soul. This depth psychological approach shows how stories activate divine energies in the world around us, making the mythic gods real as they walk in our imaginations and in our interactions with others. We see the resonances of these myths in the stories we continue to tell and retell. My presentation will look the relationship between the characters Brianna Randall Fraser and Roger Mackenzie Wakefield in season four of the Outlander television series. I will explore the presence of motifs connected to Eros and Psyche as I discuss how the activation of these archetypal energies helps to illuminate ways we might think about deepening our relationships with others and with ourselves.

Download Dori’s slidesDownload
Download Dori’s notesDownload

About Dori:

Dori Koehler, Ph.D. is a cultural mythologist and scholar of American popular culture. She is a professor of Humanities and Popular Culture at Southern New Hampshire University. Her book The Mouse and the Myth: Sacred Art and Secular Ritual is available on Amazon. Her latest article on Walt Disney as a manifestation of the trickster archetype will be published in a forthcoming collection of essays through John Libbey Publishing. She lives in Santa Barbara with her husband and their cocker spaniel, Sorcha.

To connect with Dori, visit her blog, Of Myth and (Hu)Men: Myth and Ritual of our Time.

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The Mythologium welcomes Dr. Robert W. Guyker

Robert will present on the topic of Mything with games, gaming with myths.

Robert presents insights drawn from his dissertation, Myth in Translation: The Ludic Imagination in Contemporary Video Games (2016), and other writings on the myth-conscious approach to media and media-conscious approach to myths. He outlines the theoretical problems, ethics, and new creative possibilities that emerge when considering the incorporation, production and reception of traditional—and fictional—mythologies in the interactive context of games and gaming culture. A pluralistic ethos is proposed to engender critical, but playful, polymythy as a sensible principle of design and storytelling across new media.  This especially resonates with the growing need for today’s mythologists to engage with cultural, creative, and stylistic diversity in our increasingly multifabulaic world and inclusive media ecology.

Robert W. Guyker, Ph.D., is Resident Mythologist for the Joseph Campbell Writers’ Room at Studio School, Los Angeles where he teaches writing, storytelling, and art history.  He currently serves as Associate Editor for the journal Cultural Analysis: An interdisciplinary forum on folklore & popular culture in collaboration with the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore, and is co-editor of Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter, based out of the University of Helsinki, Finland. Robert earned his Ph.D.  and M.A. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. His research has been published in Heidelberg Journal of Religion on the Internet, Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies and his poetry has been featured in Immanence: The Journal of Applied Myth, Story, and Folklore. His areas of interest beyond mythological studies include folkloristics, digital culture, (virtual) ethnography, and game studies.

Learn more about Robert’s work at the Joseph Campbell Writers’ Room and at his ResearchGate page.

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The Mythologium welcomes Dr. Jody Bower

Jody’s presentation is called, “Hero Quests and Heroine Journeys Degendered“

Who embarks on the hero’s quest or the heroine’s journey, and why? Looking at these mythic patterns through the lens of such questions allows us to rename them in non-gendered language. In this presentation, Jody Bower recasts Joseph Campbell’s Hero as the Protector, Maureen Murdock’s Heroine as the Pathfinder, Kim Hudson’s Virgin as the Integrator, and her own Aletis as the Seeker. Bower discusses how the journeys differ in pattern and outcome, and how each allows the journeyer–whatever their gender identity–to heal what must be healed for true Selfhood.

Download Jody Bower’s Four JourneysDownload

About Jody:

Jody Gentian Bower earned her PhD in Mythological Studies with a Depth Psychology Emphasis from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2012. She is the author of Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine Story, a nonfiction book that examines the Aletis (Greek for “wandering heroine”) story that has been told by women—and a few visionary males including Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and J.R.R. Tolkien—for centuries.

You can connect with Jody through her website and LinkedIn.

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Who organizes this conference?

From the left, we are Dr. Stephanie Zajchowski, Dr. Rachel Lugn, and Dr. Joanna Gardner, alumnae of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Mythological Studies program.

We loved the myth-mingling of Pacifica gatherings, so we decided to host a conference where mythologists can gather, share their work, and spark ideas.

“Why can’t our job on this earth be simply to inspire each other?”
— Graham Joyce