Directory

Arisika Razak, CNM, MPH (Health Care Administration, UC Berkeley 1978, Certified Nurse Midwife, UC San Francisco 1980), is a Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Women's Spirituality, and past Director of the Women's Spirituality MA and PhD program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is also Director of Diversity at CIIS. Arisika is an African-American healer, ritualist, spiritual dancer, and educator who practices an eclectic mix of Earth-based spiritual traditions.

She has worked with indigent women as an inner-city nurse-midwife for more than 20 years, focusing on the lives and cultures of women of color, which has led to her research interest in feminist, womanist, mujerista, and postcolonial epistemologies and worldviews, and in women's health.

Arisika is a diversity trainer and spiritual dancer who leads spiritual and healing workshops. She has performed nationally and internationally; she was the 2008 American Association of Religion-Western Region's conference chair and vice president, and she is the organization's 2009 president.

 

ARTICLES

She has an article "Embodying Womanism: Notes Towards a Holistic and Liberating Pedagogy" that is part of the anthology Ain't I a Womanist Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought (February 2013). This anthology is available on  Fortress and  Amazon.

 

" Make Medicine Out of Suffering" in the anthology Into These Hands: Wisdom from Midwives.

 

" Her Blue Body: A Pagan Reading of Alice Walker Womanism"

 

"Sacred Images of African and African American Women"

INTERVIEWS

Arisika speaks at the African Wisdom Summit on "African American Wisdom Traditions: Holistic, Resilient, and Embodied Worldviews" which was sponsored by The Shift Network. February, 2016.

 "Birth and the Healing Wisdom of Earth-Based Traditions"
Listen here
Join Michael Lerner in conversation with nurse midwives Ariska Razak, RN, and Carol Densmore, CNM, talking about birth and the healing wisdom of earth-based traditions.

" Essential Shifts Interview: Arisika Razak"
Listen here.
From the Audio Set: "The Essential Shifts" Interview Series
In this interview, professor, dancer, and midwife Arisika Razak shares her unique angle on the essential shifts our world now requires. She explores how we can each activate our "lineage of the heart," thereby linking us into the larger vision of what we are creating. She sees that we each have a unique and highly personal contribution to make to the creation of a sustainable future. To manifest that potential, she feels it is most essential to connect deeply with people who are different than us in terms of race, class, or any other form of difference. A truly sustainable world, she feels, is one in which the threads of caring and community have been rewoven so that all members of a society feel treasured and honored.

 

Arisika Razak alongside Earthlyn Manual,  Linda Compton, and Aya de Leon are interviewed by Sandy Miranda (WSE Alumnae), as part of the KPFA series  "Women, Spirit, and Peace" (October 6 2003).

 

She is interviewed on womanism in the film " Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth" (Spring 2013).

 

 FILM AND VIDEO

Arisika’s dance was performed as part of the CMCC’s 2014   Day of Remembrance and Celebration of Life.

 The Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic has been founded to provide access to alternative complementary modalities of treatment for women with cancer.

 CMCC’s annual celebration of their community and remembrance of the women in the community who they love and cherish, who passed away in 2013.

 Music is by Amy Carol Webb

Arisika dancing:

 

 

Her film credits include Fire Eyes (on female genital cutting), A Place of Rage (which profiles Alice Walker, JuneJordan and Angela Davis), and Who Lives Who Dies (on health disparities in the U.S.).