PRESENTATIONS
My academic research interests focus on the reciprocating relationship between story and culture and its influence on social perceptions about women. I enjoy presenting and discussing my research. Abstracts of my presentations and explorations are presented on this page. For speaking opportunities, please contact me at stephanie@stephaniezajchowski.com.
Joseph Campbell and Goddess Mythologies
Jung Society of Austin, TX, March 22, 2024
In 2023, the Joseph Campbell Foundation published a study guide to accompany Campbell’s Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. Join Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD, one of the study guide authors, to see how the Goddesses: Skeleton Key Study Guide can provide a pathway for your own explorations into Campbell’s research on goddess figures from various mythologies and cultures.
Myth in Corporate Culture
2023 Popular Culture Association Annual Conference; San Antonio, TX
Myths provide a meaning-making framework that informs human actions. In this way, myths cultivate interests that build thriving cultures.
This presentation asserts the idea that corporate narratives, much like myth, cultivate interests that inform thriving corporate cultures. Mission statements, company origin stories, and branding are examined as elements of a myth that inform corporate meaning-making and build strong workplace cultures that drive employee action.
Drinking from the Chalice:
Mythic Images of Wholeness and Healing in the Alchemy of the Apocalypse
Hosted by the Jung Society of Austin, November 2021
In George Ripley’s alchemical text, Cantilena, there is a story of a barren and dying king, the “Ancient of Days,“ who seeks rebirth by dissolving into the “First Matter” and thus returning to the Mother’s womb. While gestating, the Mother drinks from the golden chalice of Babylon. What’s in the chalice? — repressed material seeking integration. In order to revivify the society, the old ruling ideas are torn down and all that was formerly excluded is brought into this great cosmic womb to be reborn anew, to encompass the whole.
In a year that has felt apocalyptic, it is interesting to observe that both Carl Jung and Edward Edinger examine Cantilena within the context of the mythology of the Christian apocalypse. Alchemical symbolism is informed by apocalyptic themes illuminating the idea that dissolution and integration are part of the process of creating something new. Old systems are challenged amidst violence, fear, and disorientation. Each is a symptom, according to Edinger, of assimilating opposing forces.
We have witnessed both destruction and revelation this year. I find myself returning to this image of the chalice and wondering, what does it mean to “drink from the golden chalice” in 2021? This discussion will explore this question along with other key themes in the mythology of the apocalypse including bearing witness to suffering, holding negative capability in the liminal space between dissolution and rebirth, and the deep and complex process of healing.
Cultivating Community at the Fates and Graces Mythologium
2020 Coming Home for Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association; Santa Barbara, CA
Pacifica Graduate Institute provides a unique education. As alumnae, we know the value of an academic community, and we know the value of a soulful community–one that shares stories. It is in this spirit that we founded the Fates and Graces Mythologium, a two-and-a-half-day conference and retreat for scholars of mythology to share their work and spark inspiration through panels, presentations, and social gatherings. During this presentation, Joanna, Rachel, and Stephanie, all Mythological Studies alumnae, will discuss the inception of the Mythologium. We will demonstrate the unique value of bringing together mythologists to explore their scholarly work, both individually and collectively. It is vitally important to cultivate and care for our communities, and we find that each of us, as alumni, can aid in this endeavor.
Apocalyptic Gender Coding:
The Influence of the Myth of the Whore of Babylon on Gender in the United States
2020 Association for Women in Mythology Conference; Santa Ana Pueblo, NM
The Whore of Babylon is a diabolical figure in the Book of Revelation, the final book of the canonical Bible that tells of the end of the world. Throughout history, this image has been used metaphorically to communicate a threat. The focus on the Whore as a woman and mother infuses the female body with apocalyptic significance and reinforces patriarchal gender roles.
This presentation traces an American mythology of the Whore of Babylon and examines its influence on cultural ideas about gender in the United States. While multiple mythemes emerge from these various iterations of the religious image, focusing on the mytheme of Empire and Decadence allows the presentation to enter into ongoing postcolonial, womanist, and feminist critiques of Revelation’s liberation narrative.
Further, the study asserts that the myth of the Whore of Babylon is important to meaning-making in contemporary American reproductive dialogues. A feminist critique exposes how the appearance of this mytheme in anti-abortion discourse influences cultural ideas about gender, sexuality, and reproduction, manifesting in public policies that police female reproduction.
Building on the long history of retelling the myth of the Whore of Babylon to inspire liberation, this presentation concludes with an alternate reading of the Whore myth that works to reclaim the female power in the narrative. By holding the complex fluidity of this mythic image as both oppressive and liberating for women, we may imagine beyond the social limitations of gender, particularly as it relates to the procreative body.
The Whore of Babylon: Mythemes in Contemporary Reproductive Politics
2019 Fates and Graces Mythologium; Morro Bay, CA
From a series of 21 woodcuts of the Apocalypse for Martin Luther’s translation of the New Testament (Augsburg: S. Otmar,).
The Whore of Babylon is a diabolical female figure in the Book of Revelation, the final book of the canonical Bible. Throughout history, this image has been used metaphorically to communicate a threat. The focus on the Whore as a woman and mother infuses the female body with apocalyptic significance and reinforces stereotypical gender roles. This presentation traces how a fundamentalist mythological interpretation of the Whore of Babylon enters into current reproductive politics that aim to bolster the moral codes of female procreation. Focusing on religious imagery associated with the Whore of Babylon in conversation with contemporary socio-political discourses, the project identifies three mythemes: False Religion and Deception, Empire, and Monstrous Births. Attentive to the reciprocating relationship between story and culture, this study shows how these mythemes form a mythological narrative important to meaning-making in contemporary American reproductive dialogues. A feminist critique exposes how the appearance of these themes in anti-abortion discourse influences cultural ideas about gender, sexuality, and reproduction, manifesting in public policies that police female reproduction.
Apocalyptic Emptiness
2019 Popular Culture Association Annual Conference; Washington, D.C.
Apocalypse is part of American vernacular. The zombie apocalypse or the nuclear apocalypse are just some of the “end of the world” themes envisioned through horror or even comedy. The prolific presence of such themes displays a cultural attraction to this destructive narrative.
“Haunted houses” are another medium in which apocalyptic themes are recreated. Each Halloween, Texas based houses such as the “Hell House” hosted by Trinity Church in Cedar Hill and the “Apocalypse Experience” in Poolville both address current cultural issues through theatrical reenactment of the apocalypse. These performances depict hellish horrors juxtaposed with the hope of a heavenly utopia. The narrative of the apocalypse becomes a space where societal discontent is expressed and imaginatively destroyed. The theme of destruction then entwines with a vision of the perfect society.
In this presentation, I explore the way that the narrative of the apocalypse is used as a blank canvas onto which cultural anxieties are projected for the service of cultural construction. Social structures are deconstructed in the apocalyptic narrative and then reimagined in the emptiness left thereafter. These various visions of the apocalypse may also present the cultural desire for a space to hold uncertainty. Apocalyptic destruction provides a negative capability that allows for a yet unknown coherence of meaning to emerge. While retellings of the apocalypse present a societal attraction to destruction, these repetitions also provide a narrative structure that allows viewers to surrender a desire to understand and thus remain receptive to the unknown.
Sexualized Flesh and the Protection of Fur:
Negotiating Feminine Identity in the Catskin Tales
2017 Popular Culture Association Annual Conference; San Diego, CA
Fleeing the father’s sexual advances, the heroine of “Catskin” tales (AT 510B) must negotiate her budding identity within the matrix of a paternal incestuous pursuit. The burden of sexualization is born by the maiden who cunningly evades the situation by encasing her beauty in a loathly guise of animal skins, a transformation that allows her to live intimately hidden within the landscape. Escaping her beauty by becoming hideous enables the heroine sovereignty, the space to explore shifting identities, and to test the true intentions of those around her.
The psycho-sexual thread that drives “Catskin” tales presents intriguing ideas regarding the cultural contradictions of sexualization, the perceived danger of female sexuality, as well as the exploration of the female body as an analogue to the thriving or dying society. Bearing the burden of upholding the sanctity of cultural codes, the heroine must contain the seductive power of her sexuality through natural forces such as the constraining capability of animal skins, a loathly appearance that simultaneously protects the heroine, marginalizes her within the society, and also empowers her. She is allowed sovereignty precisely because she is hideous. Unique to fairy tales, this type of boundary play between beautiful and beastly mirrors the complex maneuvering sexuality requires. Such concealing and revealing within the cultural domain reveals the challenge of defining and negotiating identity, and the importance of gender and sexuality in understanding it.
Persephone’s Perception: The Paradox of Motherhood
2016 Association for Women in Mythology Conference; Boston, MA
In life there is also death: a paradox mothers embrace as we join the immortal dance of the feminine