STOP: Before registering for this course, students must first enroll through the Graduate Theological Union. You should do that here. Already enrolled through the GTU? Great! Click “Register” above to get started.

This course is a cooperative venture between the Holy Women Icons Project, the Graduate Theological Union, and the Center for the Arts and Religion (CARE). To learn more, visit CARE’s website or see the GTU course description.

A One-Week Intensive Course on the Island of Hawai’i

In most Western classrooms, students would have to take four separate courses to learn about the arts, spirituality, sustainability, and feminism. Taking cues from indigenous ways of knowing, grounded in the aloha ‘āina movement, the lines between these seemingly disparate areas blur because, in Hawaiian culture, the arts, spirituality, sustainability, and gender theories are mutually informative and inseparable. This land-based intensive course offers students the opportunity to engage theory with practice on the Big Island of Hawai’i.

Intersectional ecofeminist philosophy undergirds conversations about iconography, revolutionary holy women from history and mythology, ethics, and sustainability. Knowing, being, and doing merge with engaged pedagogy that values the mind, body, and heart as students read and discuss critical theory, participate in guided icon painting, honor the āina (land) by participating in planting, harvesting, and off-grid-sustainable living, research and create sustainable artistic practices functional for their home contexts, and examine the ethical virtues exuded by revolutionary women from history and myth. Each day includes a deep dive into the life, legend, and legacy of an historical, mythological, and archetypal woman as students examine the ethical virtue she promotes and how such virtue directly impacts both theory and praxis at specific places on the island.