Miriam Robbins Dexter

Foremothers of the Women's Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries Miriam Robbins Dexter

Publisher Marketing: Forty years ago, the Second Wave Feminist Movement was in full swing in America. Besides fighting for legal issues such as equal pay in the marketplace and the right to have a credit card or keep one's own name, feminists demanded women's health and reproductive rights, marriage reform, and sexual freedom. Radical women began to question the very concept of God as male, with "man in his image," and from this revolutionary brew, the Women's Spirituality movement was born. Just as foam-born Aphrodite arose from the sea, the revolutionary Goddess movement arose to inspire women around the country and the world to begin researching ancient worldwide Goddess-based cultures and to create spontaneous circles of women's ritual and Goddess worship. Some called themselves witches, leaving the church or temple to start covens or churches of their own; others worked within mainstream religious frameworks to bring the "feminine" into what had earlier been male-only priesthoods and doctrines. This seeming explosion of creative religious expression on the part of contemporary Western women is the thematic focus of this book; the 33 chapters are the individual stories of the movement's founders in their own words. This is an important book for Women's Studies and the study of Women's Spirituality. Contributor Bio:  Noble, Vicki Vicki Noble received her MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. She completed a fellowship in emergency ultrasound at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York and became a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer in 2004. She is a Fellow of the Amercian College of Emergency Physicians and is the Ultrasound Section subcommittee chair for education and practice standards. She has been awarded the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Excellence Award as well as being nominated for the Harvard University Medical School Teaching award and the Brian McGovern Award for Clinical Excellence at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has taught extensively in emergency ultrasound both in the United States and internationally. She is currently practicing in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is the Director of Emergency Ultrasound.