Women’s Spirituality Courses of Study (PhD and MA)

Doctoral and Master of Arts Programs

Areas of Study

Each major area of study in the WSE program includes the contributions, reflections, experience, and scholarship of indigenous peoples and people of color from diverse local and global backgrounds, as well as a diversity of religious and spiritual traditions.

Syllabi for our courses include non-Western, non-canonical, and non-dominant academic sources. The methodologies discussed and utilized in WSE courses include multiple ways of knowing drawn from ancient and contemporary sources, reflecting the contributions of ethnically diverse, working-class and professional-class scholars.

Women and World Religions

We review a variety of ancient lineages that document women's spiritual power and religious experience from the ancient world to the present. The study of women and world religions begins with an examination of the evidence for the transmission of signs of reverence for a dark mother from Africa to all continents of the world. We explore the sacred iconographies and diverse roles of women in African, Native American, Meso-American, South American, Old European, and other indigenous, nature-based, Goddess and God spiritual traditions.

We also examine women's spiritual roles and practices in historical and contemporary expressions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Shinto; and more. Canonical and orthodox religious beliefs are studied alongside the subterranean, submerged, and heretical streams that run beneath the accepted doctrines of established religions-found in the folklore, heresies, and everyday rituals of diverse subaltern cultures. Women's spiritual quests and Goddess-God interfaith dialogues are encouraged, and the "sacred feminine" of many traditions is reclaimed and honored.

Feminist and Ecofeminist Philosophy

Feminist philosophy has long emphasized a relational approach to key philosophical issues. This approach incorporates a postmechanistic worldview of dynamic interconnectedness in the web of life. Ecofeminist philosophy explores the embodied, embedded, ecosocial context of philosophical issues, with attention to the emergent field of relational or holistic thought, alongside rational-intuitive thinking. Courses include work with process philosophy and process theology/thealogy; womanist-feminist worldviews; Luce Irigaray's ethics of sexuate difference; and literary responses to major ecological and philosophical issues.

Women's Mysteries, Sacred Arts and Healing

A: Women's Mysteries and Sacred Arts
Many elements of language, ritual, and the arts have roots in cultural responses to the elemental powers of the female and to the ineffable mysteries of the cosmos. An honoring of the female mysteries of birth, sexuality, death, and rebirth informs our coursework in ritual, music, dance, literature, painting and sculpture, and films. The experiential as well as intellectual study of diverse sacred arts is intended to evoke one's innate creativity, revealing personal and cultural sources of mystical insight, embodied healing, and artistic blossoming.

B: Body Wisdom, Women, and Healing
Our program includes an emphasis on the embodied wisdom of women and other subaltern populations, and we focus on the vernacular history that preserves the role of women and other oppressed genders who have served as seers, healers, and nurturers of life. Western culture is slowly emerging from an overly dualistic worldview that devalues the creative responses of the bodymind and denies the body as a source of wisdom. Courses include work in the female modes and powers of healing; issues in women's health, healing, and wellness; an exploration of diverse views of female embodiment and sexuality; and experiential studies in movement and bodywork.

Cultural History, Archaeomythology, and EcoSocial Anthropology

Academic blinders imposed by an androcentric and reductionist worldview, along with an anti-spiritual bias in the social sciences, have for too long prevented an understanding of cultures with an entirely different cosmology or worldview. Here, humanistic social sciences-which hold a more integrative focus on body, mind, spirit, and place-reconstruct a broader and deeper understanding of both ancient and contemporary cultures. These studies draw upon the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, genetics, linguistics, religious and cultural history, art history, and folklore studies to generate a multifaceted understanding of the material and spiritual dimensions of early cultures of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, Classical, and Medieval ages, continuing into the present. New, interdisciplinary, and integral social sciences examine the dynamic interrelationships and co-generation of ecological and social realities, especially as these affect the gendered structures of diverse societies. Courses in this area study nonpatriarchal, matristic, and matriarchal cultures in their ecosocial contexts, as well as the postcolonial dynamics of the North and South, East and West.

Justice, Community, Sustainability/Peace and Partnership Studies

The construction of patterns of greater justice, nonviolence, and a more harmonious world draws from many sources, including the hopeful legacy of African migration studies that emphasize justice with nurturance and healing, equality with difference, and transformation. We combine feminist and womanist analysis and vision-in regard to social, political, and economic systems-with an engaged spirituality that draws on active compassion to create a more equitable and caring world. Women-and other submerged and subaltern populations all over the world-have rejected systems that rationalize violence, choosing instead to create fresh paths to peace and community well-being. Courses explore cultures that passed long eras in peace; review the causes of structural and other violence; and examine the shift from dominator systems to values of gender-partnership and community. Other courses examine postcolonial challenges and alternatives, or study constructive initiatives and frameworks that draw on reciprocity and mutuality for problem-solving.

These five areas of study present a variety of diverse paths for approaching the sacred. They help us develop a deeper connection to the ultimate Mystery of Life. We believe that there is an urgent need for well-educated individuals of all genders who are deeply grounded in a spiritual matrix, and who seek to build a community based on the values of equality with difference, justice with compassion, and sustainability throughout the greater Earth community.

The Women's Spirituality program acknowledges local and international spheres of action, and seeks to engage the most pressing ecosocial issues of our time, including the need to find nonviolent solutions to a variety of significant personal, political, and global problems.

Academic and scholarly excellence in the WSE programs is supported by a rigorous curriculum that includes research and methodology courses, increasingly sophisticated writing assignments, and individualized faculty mentoring.

Academic writing and research are a fundamental part of the program, and it is strongly recommended that students schedule research consultations with the CIIS Library staff. Students are expected to utilize online journals and library texts for research papers. Where relevant, additional courses to enhance and support student writing skills may be required. Student creativity is nurtured through the inclusion of visual, literary, performing and ritual arts, and studio art classes in the curriculum.

Integral and innovative governance involving the program's students, staff, and faculty is supported by regular WSE program meetings each semester. These meetings address the development of the curriculum; the holding of diversity within the program; program and budgetary support for student initiatives such as the OCHRE Journal of Women's Spirituality; special program events such as the program retreat and graduation party; student-led New Moon Forums; student issues and concerns; the annual program assessment of learning goals and outcomes; and actual and potential changes in program procedures, curriculum requirements, and other academic and nonacademic policies.

The vision of the programs is never static, for it emerges from a dynamic matrix that draws on the gifts, talents, and expertise of the faculty, students, staff, and administration of the Institute and the larger community of CIIS. However, one primary professional goal has been unchanging-namely, to empower women and individuals of diverse gender/s to participate ever more fully in the transformation of local and planetary culture in the 21st century.

Sample Courses from Each of the Five Women's Spirituality Focus Areas

Women and World Religions

PARW 7118: Women and World Religions: Historical Perspectives (3 units)
Our human past-and hopefully our future-includes a profound sense of the sacredness of females, males, and a diversity of other genders and sexual identities. It includes a profound reverence for Nature. Beginning with the spiritual traditions of Mother Africa, we trace the cultural evolution of religions, and the roles of women in various regions of the Near, Middle, and Far East; Old Europe and ancient Crete, Greece, and Rome; India, China, Japan; and the New World. We explore teachings about women's experiences and the relations of women, men, and children in Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Goddess traditions, and neo-Pagan religions. The class concludes with individual visions for creating a 21st century closer to our heart's desires.

PARW 7560: Thealogy/Theology: Goddess/God, Humanity, Nature, and Ethics (3 units, online)
This course compares and contrasts feminist approaches to sources of reliable knowledge (how we know), Goddess/God, humanity, nature, and ethics in the contemporary Goddess movement, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Authors to be studied include Alice Walker, Susan Griffin, Mary Daly, Judith Plaskow, Carol P. Christ, Delores Williams, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Rita Gross, Rita Nakashima Brock, Starhawk, Lina Gupta, China Galland, and Kwok Pui-lan.

PARW 7586: African Black Mother and Black Madonnas (3 units)
This feminist cultural history course is grounded in Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum's books, Black Madonnas; Feminism, Religion and Politics in Italy; and Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers. Students analyze evidence of genetics, archaeology, and folklore for the oldest veneration we know, a dark woman of Central and South Africa whose signs were carried by African migrants to every continent after 50,000 BCE. Other topics include the memory of the African black mother in saints' stories, peasant women's (comari, comadri, commere) rituals, and vernacular art; persecution of dark others in Europe (Canaanites, Israelites, Muslims, and heretics); comparisons of white elites in the U.S. with persecution and social control of dark others; the rise of dark others in the world in the 1950s and 1960s; and contemporary dark mothers.

Feminist and Ecofeminist Philosophy

PARW 6630: Feminist Perspectives on Western Culture (2 units, online)
While reviewing feminist critiques in various fields, this course focuses primarily on creative alternatives, grounded in female perspectives, to problematic aspects of the status quo. Topics covered will include differences between the sexes, theories of early cultural development, language and literary expression, time, the visual arts, spirituality and religion, process philosophy, cosmology, and the ecofeminist vision. Students will be encouraged through the creativity of their papers to contribute to the ongoing mission-and sacred calling-of the women's movement.

PARW 7116: Embodied, Embedded Philosophy (1 unit, weekend)
This course explores possibilities for philosophy with body and nature at the center. After a critique of the disembodied, dis-embedded assumptions within Western philosophy, the class will identify relevant postmechanistic discoveries regarding cosmological/quantum processes; ecological processes (humans-in-nature, interactions with bioregions, interactions with animals); inter-human dynamics; and internal body/mind processes (with attention to the dimorphic nature of the human species, evidenced by new discoveries in female physiology). Finally, students will write a paper on reconceptualizing an issue in a selected branch of philosophy from a relational, process-oriented perspective.

PARW 7571: Process and Feminist Theology (2 or 3 units, online)
Process philosophy, especially as developed by Charles Hartshorne, presents a radical challenge to the understandings of divine transcendence in "classical theism" while affirming change, embodiment, relationship, and the place of humanity in nature. Many feminist theologies and thealogies reject the transcendent "male God-out-there" of traditional theism and share process philosophy's interest in positively valuing the processes of birth, death, and renewal; the body; relationship; and human embeddedness in the web of life.

Women's Mysteries, Sacred Arts and Healing

PARW 6785: Women's Embodiment, Sexuality, and Healing (3 units)
This course offers a personal, multicultural, and womanist exploration of the spiritual gifts, liberatory struggles, embodied experiences, cultural roles, and collective and individual resilience found in women around the world. Using readings drawn from science and medicine, psychology, feminism, women's spirituality, Earth-based spiritual traditions, and the writings of Euro-American women and women of color, we will review and re-envision the basic themes of female embodiment: woman and nature; growth and maturation; illness, disability, death, and dying; sexual diversity, abuse, and healing; and menarche, childbirth, and menopause. We will use the sacred arts of ritual, writing, sound, and movement to weave a safe container to hold our own stories of descent, healing, and transformation.

PARW 6790: Contemporary Issues in Women's Health (3 units)
The class explores the marginalization of women's health issues within dominant sociocultural or scientific frameworks and their implications for health policy and planning. Readings drawn from science and medicine, feminism, psychology, and the writings and literature of women of color, along with the students' own experience, will be used to review topics and controversies in contemporary women's health such as: reproductive health rights; women, cancer and environmental pollution; health issues and inequities among socially marginalized female populations; local and global violence against women; women's roles in scientific and biological health fields; complementary, alternative, and integrative health care for women; social and ethical issues of the new reproductive technologies; menstruation, childbirth, aging, and menopause; and body image and eating disorders. The class includes a visit to a local health facility.

PARW 7054: Women's Spiritual Poetry and Fiction (3 units)
Through the millennia, women have crystallized our spiritual insights, longing, wisdom, and experiences of mystical communion with the Divine in prayers and poems, storytelling and novels. We will consider works by Isabel Allende, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Adrienne Rich, Mary Mackey, Susan Griffin, Alice Walker, Janine Canan, Audre Lorde, Linda Hogan, and Starhawk, among others, with guest speakers from among the local San Francisco Bay Area Women's Spirituality writers' community.

PARW 7200: Coming Alive: Rosen Movement and Bodywork (1-3 units, weekend)
Developed by internationally renowned somatics pioneer Marion Rosen, the Rosen Method allows us to access unconscious energies and patterns in new ways, to see connections between our emotions, our posture, and the spiritual attitudes we carry. Effortless movement to music opens the breathing, lubricates the body's joints, stretches and strengthens muscles, and awakens an aliveness and enjoyment in the body. Relaxing hands-on work with chronic muscle tension invites the comfortable acceptance of one's body, dissolves mind-body dualism, and creates an opening for the surfacing of emotions that had been obscured within the holding patterns of the body.

PARW 7420: The Healing Ecstasy of Sound (3 units)
Exercises and practice in toning, changing rhythm and drumming traditions, musicality, song, sound healing rituals, and various musical spiritual practices, both traditional and contemporary, will be shared. Students apply their knowledge to co-create a final presentation that serves as a Spring music and healing event for the community, where they will share their original creations.

PARW 7690: Women's Sacred Arts and Cultural Transformation (2 units, studio art course)
The collective work of an artist constitutes an autobiography of sacred art. Our ability to learn about our Self is enhanced if we become a participant-observer in our own experience, bringing our own rich traditions into the cultural mix as we begin a personal exploration of the spiritual creativity inherent in our conscious and unconscious Being. This class is designed to provide insight into women's sacred arts and to explore their impact on cultural transformation. Our objective will be to connect meaning to the symbolism of art, as we search areas of our existence, and collage together its different influences. Our own internal search will enable us to release and increase our creativity, even as we focus on the work of contemporary artists who chose to express sacred themes and transform cultural attitudes.

Cultural History, Archaeomythology, and EcoSocial Anthropology

PARW 7510: Cultures in Balance: Women at the Center (3 units, online)
Drawing its title from the groundbreaking work of Peggy Reeves Sanday and her book, Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy, this course presents the body of knowledge that is developing about contemporary and historical societies where women are seen as the center of culture and where women and men collaborate to create balanced, sustainable societies. These societies show markedly different social customs, artistic expressions, and religious beliefs and practices when compared when cultures where women are disrespected and excluded from leadership roles. The underlying assumptions, biases, and expectations of researchers investigating the beliefs, rituals, and social structures of societies-especially those in the distant past-influence the interpretation of data, often with dramatically different results.

PARW 7532: Subaltern Cultures: Cosmology, Icons, and Rituals (3 units)
In this cultural and religious history course the cultures of subordinated ancestors (Basques, Sami, Sardinians, Etruscans, Sicilians, for example) are studied alongside the subaltern cultures of the U.S. In addition to Native Americans, Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans, we also study European immigrants who were considered black when they arrived in the U.S. (such as the Irish, Jews, Slavs, and Italians). Many ways of knowing are tapped: mythology, folklore, science (notably genetics and archaeology), art, poetry, literature, social sciences (such as anthropology), dance, and semiotics.

PARW 7640: Goddess and God Civilization of Ancient Crete (3 units, online)
In ancient Crete, the central divinity was a Nature Goddess or Goddesses who shared powers in partnership with a Nature God or Gods. We question how Crete's nature religion influenced this extraordinary culture, including: gender relations of women and men and the social roles each sex played in family, economic, political, and religious life; the naturalistic and exuberant artwork; and expressions of relative harmony and peace in contrast to violence and warfare in neighboring cultures. Using methodologies of archaeology, mythology, history of religion, and archaeomythology, we trace evidence for ritual activity and for Goddesses and God iconography in Neolithic and Bronze Age Crete from c. 7000 BCE to c. 1100 BCE. Interrelations are situated in the specific eras of cultural history on the fabled isle of Crete.

Justice, Community, Sustainability / Peace and Partnership Studies

PARW 6535: Heart and Soul of Justice (1 unit, weekend)
This course is about cultivating a "practice of emancipatory subjectivity." Learning how to work with the challenging dynamics of cross-cultural alliance building requires more than an acquisition of information about the other. Human capacities and qualities such as discernment, courage, fierce compassion, playfulness, and self-awareness are essential.

These capacities empower us and enable us to see and work with the ways in which cultural conditioning has affected us. In this course students and teachers will build an "experience worthy" container necessary for addressing issues of race, class, gender, and other forms of social oppression.

PARW 6643 Women, Spirituality, and Social Change: (1 unit weekend)
This course examines the powerful synergy between spirituality and social action. In the context of current world concerns, we review the lives and wisdom of women from diverse faith traditions and cultures for insight and inspiration. Readings and class explorations include Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Indigenous sources. We focus on women who recognized the unity of life and whose love for the Divine in all creation compelled and sustained their work of peace and justice-making. A highly interactive lecture-discussion format will be complemented by audio and video recordings of several of the women studied, inspirational music, spiritual practices, and resources for ongoing study. Students will be encouraged to incorporate any practices and perspectives that may enrich their own ongoing lifework.

PARW 7119: Economics, Politics, Body, and Spirit (1-2 units, weekend or online)
While more people are starting to talk about body and spirit together, their larger context of politics and economics is still generally ignored. Drawing from Riane Eisler's cultural transformation theory, we explore how fundamental aspects of our lives are constructed very differently in a domination or partnership system.

We look at both sexuality and spirituality from this new perspective; examine what a caring economics would look like; and examine how the construction of gender and politics of the body are integrally connected to both national and international policies. We will form community connections as we share our own experiences, reflections, and future plans. The course is based on two of Eisler's books, Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body; and The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics.

Diversity in the Curriculum

An appreciation for diversity is reflected in Women's Spirituality Journeys, where WSE faculty and students visit selected historic sites and/or archaeological excavations to study submerged cultures, experience regional biodiversity, and immerse themselves in a variety of contemporary and historical religious and spiritual traditions.

Special program events such as WSE concerts, galas, retreats, conferences, social gatherings, art exhibits, and other community productions are intentionally diverse and multicultural. They are renowned for their superlative representations of spiritual arts, music, and dance traditions from around the world.

Courses are delivered in flexible formats that include weekday, weekend, evening, and online courses. We offer a special Nine-Day Intensive series of courses designed for the convenience of semi-distance students that are open to all students.

Students enrolled in the Semi Distance Option, may take up to 17 units of the total 36 required units online. In addition, semi-distance students may bring in up to 6 units of Independent Study courses, including those taken as Women's Spirituality Journeys with WSE core and adjunct faculty. They may also bring in 6 units of courses taken at another accredited graduate university.

Flexible Format

Both the MA and PhD degrees may be earned through the Flexible Format Option. Students may combine WSE residential weekday or evening courses with online courses, weekend courses, the Women's Spirituality Nine-Day Intensive (offering four 1-unit residential courses in nine days), independent studies, and/or Women's Spirituality Study Journeys abroad.

With the approval of their advisor, students are allowed to transfer in up to 6 semester units of academic credit from another accredited graduate school. They may also, with the approval of their advisor, bring in 3 units of academic credit drawn from CIIS Public Programs, which may include guest presentations, lectures, or workshops given by Women's Spirituality luminaries. Required electives for the program may be drawn from within the WSE program or from other online or residential courses offered by diverse programs throughout the Institute.

For the benefit of those who work outside or inside the home, or who live at a distance, the MA or PhD degree may be completed entirely through a combination of online courses, residential weekend courses, independent study courses, the Nine-Day WSE Intensive, and transfer credits from another accredited graduate university.

Students who wish to choose this option must utilize the Semi-Distance Option for obtaining their Women's Spirituality degree.

The Semi-Distance Option for the MA or PhD

We recognize that many qualified students who might wish to earn a graduate degree cannot uproot themselves from their homes and jobs and move to San Francisco. To support students in these situations, we offer our Semi-Distance Option.

Although this option requires that 51% of the student's courses be taken in residential or face-to-face venues (19 units), it allows almost half of the student's required units to be taken online (17 units).

Community Building

Orientation and community building for our semi-distance students takes place during the annual Nine-Day WSE Intensive in mid-August. It also occurs during the online, required, introductory portal course (Embodying the Present). Semi-distance students who attend the Intensive are encouraged to stay an additional day for the CIIS New Student Orientation, which usually occurs on the day after the last WSE Intensive class.

WSE semi-distance students are encouraged to have face-to-face visits with CIIS staff in the Financial Aid office, the Library, and other relevant Institute departments and programs at that time, as well as to meet other WSE faculty. When semi-distance students travel to CIIS to attend WSE weekend residential courses taught by the core or adjunct faculty, they are encouraged to have face-to-face advising sessions and/or meetings with other WSE core faculty whenever possible.

In addition, WSE semi-distance students are always invited to attend WSE program meetings or student presentations that may occur while they are at CIIS.

Curriculum

The curriculum requirements are the same for residential and semi-distance students at both the MA level and the PhD level. While many-but not all-of the WSE courses available to residential students are available to the semi-distance students, courses drawn from each of our five areas of study are offered in a flexible format-such as via the annual WSE Intensive, in online courses, or via residential weekend courses.

In addition, semi-distance students may choose electives from online and residential courses offered by other programs and departments at CIIS.

Incoming semi-distance students must enroll in the Nine-Day WSE Intensive. WSE Intensive courses are currently offered in mid-August and are considered part of the Fall semester, although regularly scheduled Fall courses at the Institute begin a few days after the end of the WSE Intensive. The Nine-Day Intensive offers four 1-unit courses over nine consecutive days (including two weekends, which "bookend" the five days of weekday courses).

The Intensive is offered annually, and courses within it rotate on a three-year basis without repetition. We require that semi-distance students enroll in the WSE Intensive that occurs closest to the time of their first semester (for students admitted in the Fall this would be the WSE Intensive at the beginning of that Fall semester).

Students can enroll in one, two, three, or all four of the 1-unit courses offered in each Intensive. However, new students are strongly urged to take at least three of the courses in their first Intensive.

The WSE Intensives are popular with our semi-distance students because community building occurs within them, and because the Intensives afford them the possibility of earning 12 face-to-face units over three Augusts, while paying for only three trips to San Francisco.

Online Courses

Students may take almost half (up to a total of 17 units) of the required 36 units online.

Other Courses

Students may take up to 6 units of Independent Study courses with the approval of their advisors. However, semi-distance students must reserve 3 of those units for their culminating course (either the MA Integrative Seminar or the PhD Proposal Writing course).

Students may transfer up to 6 semester units that were earned at another accredited graduate school, with the approval of their advisor. Students may include up to 3 units of academic credit from weekend courses offered by CIIS Public Programs, with the approval of their advisor.

Length of Study

While it is possible to finish the coursework for the MA degree in four semesters, or to finish the coursework required for the PhD in five or six semesters, many semi-distance students take six semesters to finish their 36 units of coursework.

Completion of the MA or PhD Degree

Semi-distance students who have successfully completed their preliminary required courses must work very closely with their WSE faculty advisor to ensure that they have reserved an appropriate number of face-to-face units (i.e., independent study units) for required culminating courses (such as proposal writing, portfolio completion, and/or advanced research methodologies).

Because the number of face-to-face units (19) is set by the accreditation authorities and is not negotiable, students must carefully plan their visits to CIIS in order to earn a sufficient number of face-to-face courses via WSE Nine-Day Intensives, regularly scheduled weekend courses, Public Programs, and so on.