These spirited, scholarly offerings—among the very first M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations in Women's Spirituality in the world—represent the flowering of a contemporary movement to resacralize women's lives.

Women's Spirituality at CIIS is recognized for pioneering new ground in higher education that honors the body, mind and spirit of women through the ages and around the world. These accomplishments are all the more valuable, given the many centuries during which women have been denied education, denied a free spirit, denied the right-beyond-violence to an embodied sacredness in our being and doing—from the sexual and maternal to the emotional, mental, political, economic, artistic and ecological choices we make.

We present these creative, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies to provide inspiration for women and men for the new millennium. Taken as a whole, this body of work strives to promote understanding, leadership, and personal and cultural transformation—toward peace and justice, prosperity and well-being, pleasure and divine delight.