Friday, April 28, 2006

Motherscholar


Camille Paglia argues that the model for giving students a multicultural and gender positive education is Erich Neumann's classic The Great Mother! In doing so, she makes my week. One of my first teaching experiences involved trying to use Neumann to explain a statue of the Venus of Wilendorf to a group of freshmen. Needless to say, it failed. But, Neumann is great because he's Jungian, but not dippy about the goddesses, who could be quite fearful. And academia needs a return to the mossy matrix of nature.

"To erase nature from the humanities curriculum not only inhibits students' appreciation of a tremendous amount of great, nature-inspired poetry and painting but also disables them even from being able to process the daily news in our uncertain world of devastating tsunamis and hurricanes. "
Goddess bless.

2 comments:

SecondComingOfBast said...

Cool image Rufus, I might borrow that from you. Might make a perfect opening picture for my Blog, I've been thinking of putting a Medusa on it, but I might use this instead.

Rufus said...

Isn't she great? We know so little about Minoan culture, but their art is just breathtaking!