19 Jan 2012
Identity and community: topics at this year’s Pagan Conference in Claremont
“Identity and Community” in Paganism will be the focus of the 8th annual Conference on Current Pagan Studies Feb. 4 and Feb. 5 at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) School of Religion in Claremont.
“I am so excited about this year’s conference,” says Kahena Viale, the current Conference Director. “Not only are we continuing to work on building community, but we are dedicated to that being an inclusive community.” Last year’s theme, “Building Community” has been an important theme for Pagans and this year’s conference will continue that conversation.
There will be many papers presented on the topic as well as two keynote speakers this year.
“We are lucky to have Z Budapest and Hyperion as our Keynote Speakers; they will bring points of view that we have not covered in depth in the past,” says Kahena.
- Z. Budapest
Dr. Z. Budapest has been a part of the Pagan community since the 70’s in the U.S. She is an author, speaker, star of her own cable TV show, and director of Women’s Spirituality Forum, an organization that sponsors retreats and lectures on Woman’s Spirituality in the Bay Area. She also founded and sponsors the Dianic University Online, a school for Dianic Wicca and Goddess studies for women.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1940 to a practicing witch and medium, Z grew up appreciating Mother Nature as a god. When the Hungarian Revolution broke out in 1956 she fled and finished school in Innsbruck, then won a scholarship to the University of Vienna where she studied languages. She came to the U.S. in 1959 and by the time she was thirty she became involved with the women’s liberation movement in Los Angeles and became an activist herself, staffing the Women’s Center there for many years. Seeing the lack of a spiritual dimension to the movement she started the Woman’s Spirituality Movement and created the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number l, the first feminist witches’ coven. This was a model followed by many as this movement grew throughout the country.
- Hyperion
Hyperion is the founder of the Unnamed Path, which is an emerging shamanic path for men-who-love-men. He is also the host of the podcast by the same name. Hyperion is a spiritual teacher and presenter with over 16 years of experience in spell crafting, shamanism, energy healing, midwifing the dying, and spirit possession. He is a professional hoodoo rootworker and spiritual consultant, and a member of the Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers (AIRR). He was crowned as a priest of Changó in the Lukumí tradition (Santería) in 2001 and in the Palo Kimbisa (S.C.B.V.) as a Tata Bakofula in 2001.
A sample of the papers to be presented are:
- Susan Harper, Ph.D. – We Are the Stories We Tell: Narrative and Pagan Identity
- Sabina Magliocco, Ph.D – Indigenousness and the Discourse of Authenticity in Modern Paganisms
- Sam Webster – Can a Magician be a Pagan?
- Wendy Griffin, Ph.D. and Marie Cartier, Ph.D. – Herlands: Finding Goddess on Lesbian Land
- Kimberly D. Kirner, PhD – Living Paradox: Defining Community and Identity in Non-Exclusive Spirituality
- Tony Mierzwicki – Cyberpaganism
- Joseph Futerman, Ph.D. – Identity and the Magickal Name
The annual scholarly conference was founded in 2005 by Kahena. She is a Pagan from Upland who earned her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies in Religion from CGU.
The conference fees are: Claremont Consortium Students $25; students $45; others $55. You can save $2.50 by bringing your own coffee cup and $2.50 by bringing your own plate or save $5 when you bring both. Register at The Pagan Conference website by downloading the form and mailing it in with your check or by registering via the website using Paypal. Food is included. “We use a local independent bakery for our morning pastries and a local independent restaurant for our Saturday lunch,” it says on their website. “This year we hope you will help by bringing your own coffee cup/water bottle. Of course, we will still provide cups, etc. but would like a lighter carbon footprint.”
There are less than three weeks to sign up. It is well worth the price of admission. If you would like to get a feel of what you can expect you can read about last year’s conference here. More than 70 attended last year. Kahena says the average has been about 50 to 60 with some years being as many as 80 or 90.
“I’m very committed to the Pagan community,” says Kahena. The Pagan Conference website adds that the public is also welcome to take part: “Embodied knowledge, practically learned knowledge, and inherited knowledge are important contributions to the epistemology of Pagan thought when viewed through the analytical lens that all knowledge is seen through in the academy.”
