Tag: Myth

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The Mythologium welcomes Dr. Darlene “Maggie” Dowdy

Maggie’s presentation is titled, “Metamorphoses of Gender and Identity in Ancient and Modern Myth”

“Metamorphoses of Gender and Identity in Ancient and Modern Myth” focuses upon two mythic characters, Tiresias, the blind prophet from ancient Greece, and Estraven, the visionary politician of Ursula LeGuin’s sci-fi novel, Left Hand of Darkness.  An exploration of their masculine-feminine shapeshifting dispels the fallacy that the Western perspective has always viewed gender and gender identity as rigidly fixed in Nature.

Darlene “Maggie” Dowdy received her Ph.D in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.  Her dissertation, Harbingers of Change: Images and Archetypes of Imminent Transformation, explores the co-creative relationship between psyche, soma, and an ever-changing environment.  She presented a variation of her dissertation, Birds as Nature’s Harbingers, at the 2018 conference for the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.  Maggie advocates for an interactive approach to learning through myth and literature as is evidenced by an M.A. in English and past volunteer tutoring in English as a Second Language. 

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The Mythologium welcomes Arthur George

Art’s presentation is entitled, “Depth Psychology Aspects of the Christian Myth”

Art’s talk will think outside the box of traditional methods of biblical criticism to examine pivotal biblical stories as myth, particularly from the perspective of depth psychology. He will emphasize the Garden of Eden story, the accounts of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the Gnostic Christian myth. Understanding these stories from such a perspective gives us a deeper appreciation of them, which we can then use to enhance our spiritual lives – regardless of whether we are Christians – because that’s what myths can do.

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About Art:

Arthur George is a mythologist, cultural historian, blogger, and winemaker; formerly he was an international lawyer. He has written the award-winning The Mythology of Eden (2014) about the mythology of the biblical Eden story, and before that the leading and award-winning history of St. Petersburg, Russia, entitled St. Petersburg: the First Three Centuries. He has a mythology blog, frequently speaks at scholarly conferences, institutes, JCF Roundtables, and other audiences on mythological topics, and authors articles on the same. He is currently finishing a book about the mythology underlying our seasonal holidays, and has commenced another about the mythology of wine.

You can find Art’s blog and connect with him at www.mythologymatters.wordpress.com.

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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.