Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religion with a Concentration in Women's Spirituality California Institute of Integral Studies

Founded in 1992 by internationally known trailblazers in the women's spirituality movement, the Women's Spirituality program offers an interdisciplinary, multicultural, decolonial feminist approach to the study of spirituality and religion. Our curriculum incorporates scholarship from women/gender studies, ethnic studies, religious studies, philosophy, religion, and other related fields. We are the first PhD-granting graduate program in the US to integrate the study of the sacred feminine with the examination of contemporary social, political, and ecological issues.

Our program honors the spiritual impulse to redress the suppression of the sacred feminine and the oppression of women. We join with those who seek to end the exploitation of marginalized social groups and to address the suffering of the earth and its many species.

About the Program

Our Ph.D. degree in Philosophy and Religion with a Concentration in Women's Spirituality is designed for students who seek to deepen their knowledge in the emergent academic field of women's spirituality, especially as it relates to philosophy and religion, women's studies, and ethnic studies. Students develop advanced skills in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary women's spirituality research and writing and are prepared to make an original contribution to the field.

Areas of Emphasis

Women and World Religions

We review a variety of lineages that document women's spiritual power and religious experience from the ancient world to the present. The study of women and world religions begins with an examination of the evidence for the transmission of reverence for a dark mother of Africa and expands to all continents of the world. We explore the sacred iconographies and roles of women in African, Native American, Meso-American, South American, Asian/Pacific Islander, old European, and other indigenous, goddess, and god spiritual traditions. We examine women's spiritual roles and practices in historical and contemporary expressions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shinto, and more. Canonical and orthodox religious beliefs are studied alongside the submerged, subterranean, and heretical streams that run beneath the accepted doctrines of established religions an which are found in the folklore, heresies, and everyday rituals of subaltern cultures. We encourage women's spiritual quests, interfaith dialogues, and the study of the sacred feminine or feminine divine of all traditions.

Feminist and Eco-Feminist Philosophy and Activism

Feminist philosophy has long emphasized a relational approach to key philosophical issues; it encourages us to live well and to generate happiness in our own lives and the lives of others. This holistic approach eschews reductionist and mechanistic dualisms to generate a worldview of dynamic interconnectedness in the web of life. Eco-feminist philosophy explores the embodied, embedded, the eco-social context of philosophical issues, focusing attention on the emergent field of relational or holistic thought, as well as rational-intuitive thinking. Courses include work with process philosophy and process theology/thealogy, postcolonial womanist-feminist and indigenous worldviews, and literary responses to major ecological and philosophical issues.

Women's Mysteries, Sacred Arts, and Healing

Many elements of language, ritual, and the arts have roots in cultural responses to the elemental powers of the female and the ineffable mysteries of the cosmos. An honoring of the women's mysteries of birth and sexuality, transformation, death, and rebirth informs our coursework in ritual, music, dance, literature, painting, and film appreciation. The experiential, as well as the intellectual study of diverse sacred arts, is intended to evoke one's innate creativity, revealing personal and cultural sources of mystical insight, embodied healing, and artistic blossoming.

The Ph.D. curriculum consists of 36 units of coursework, followed by two zero-unit culminating courses, the dissertation proposal, and then dissertation writing.

Our semi-distance learning format offers students from all over the US and the world the opportunity to study with us. In this format, regarding the 36 units of required coursework, students must earn 19 units of face-to-face credit; the other 17 units may be taken online.

Students can earn face-to-face credit by attending intensives and by taking residential courses and independent studies.

Applicants to the Ph.D. program must have completed an MA degree prior to enrollment. Students admitted with an MA in a field other than philosophy, religion, women's studies, or women's spirituality may need to take up to 18 supplemental units from the Women's Spirituality curriculum. If some of the masters-level coursework included an examination of gender and/or religion, those courses may count toward the 18 supplemental units.

I. Required Foundation Courses (21 units)

• Critical and Liberatory Methods of Inquiry (2 units)
• Building Conscious Allyship (1 unit)
• Sacred Lineages: Goddesses, Foremothers, and Activists (3 units)
• Women and World Religions (3 units)
• Womanist, Feminist, and Decolonial Worldviews (3 units)
• Women's Spirituality Research Methodologies (3 units)
• Women's Mysteries, Sacred Arts, and Healing (3 units selected from the curriculum)
• Feminist and Ecofeminist Philosophy and Activism, select three units from these options:
• Spiritual Activism and Transformative Social Change (2 units) and Spirit, Compassion and Community Activism (1 unit)
• Ecofeminist Philosophy and Activism (3 units)
• Women Philosophers, Mystics, and Wisdom Teachers (3 units)

II. Areas of Emphasis—6 units

Select three units in each of two of the following areas. Please note that course offerings vary from year to year.

III. Electives (6 units)

Select any six units from any course in our program or at CIIS. Students are encouraged to take electives in their area of emphasis. A maximum of three elective units can be taken through Public Programs workshops that have been approved for academic credit.

IV. Foreign Language Proficiency (noncredit)

Knowledge of a foreign language is highly recommended for all Women's Spirituality Ph.D. students as a demonstration of multicultural awareness in an extremely diverse and pluralistic world. Knowledge of a foreign language is required if, and only if, it is inherent to the research necessary for the dissertation (e.g., to read primary sources in the language in which they were written, rather than depending on translations).

V. Comprehensive Exams (3 units plus a 0-unit course)

• Comprehensive Exam: Literature Review
• Comprehensive Exam: Advanced Research Methods

VI. Culminating Coursework (0 units)

• Dissertation Proposal Writing
• Dissertation Proposal Completion. This course may be taken a maximum of two times.
• Dissertation Writing Seminar

Goal One: Make an original and substantial contribution to the discipline of women's spirituality

For their dissertations, students will engage with an original and substantive research question that advances the field of women's spirituality. Students will also produce a rigorous and critical scholarship that maintains currency with the themes and issues in the field. Additionally, students will demonstrate both independent and collaborative modalities of intellectual and practical work while developing capacities to work with diverse ways of knowing and multiple theoretical frameworks and methodologies, including those, like feminist, womanist, postcolonial, indigenous, queer, and critical, approaches, that contest dominant paradigms and theories.

Goal Two: Demonstrate advanced research skills

Our program prepares students to situate the transdisciplinary scholarship of women's spirituality in relationship to at least one other academic discipline, such as women's studies/gender studies, religion, philosophy, and/or ethnic studies, by engaging the knowledge of primary and secondary texts, voices, themes, and debates in the literature(s) and in the local and global social, spiritual, and political discourses and movements.

Through coursework and dissertation work, students will integrate traditional research/methodological approaches with feminist, embodied, critical, reflective, transpersonal, and/or collaborative community-based approaches. To complement these goals, students will integrate research from multiple spiritual/wisdom traditions, sacred knowledge, scripture, myth, ritual, and praxis, while critically analyzing and evaluating their own and others' standpoints, frameworks/worldviews, and findings. To prepare students to continue their contributions after their dissertation completion, our program emphasizes the importance of demonstrating an ability to communicate one's findings in both scholarly and public arenas, using complex and nuanced language appropriate to the venue.

Goal Three: Demonstrate a commitment to socially relevant scholarship

Students should be able to synthesize and evaluate multiple and diverse philosophies, theologies/thealogies, and theoretical frameworks in the field of women's spirituality inside and outside the classroom; students are thus expected to keep abreast of current advances within the field of women's spirituality and related areas. Through coursework, students will demonstrate an ability to connect their academic inquiry with the real-world concerns of communities outside academia.

Goal Four: Demonstrate the transformation of self and society

Students will be prepared to articulate, orally and in writing, personal reflections that exhibit growth in self-awareness (including in socio-political standpoint), emotional intelligence, and spiritual/philosophical/religious development. As is important in any field, students will also be prepared and supported to articulate, orally and in writing, growth in cultural sensitivity/humility, and in awareness of their relationship to other humans and to the rest of the natural world. This will also include demonstrating a complex and critical understanding of diversity and pluralism, including but not limited to diversity of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation; race, ethnicity, nationality, and culture; and ecological, spiritual, and religious identities. Lastly, students will be supported in their ability to critically evaluate multiple perspectives, including interconnected systems of oppression as well as practices of social transformation.

To complement work in an area of emphasis within the program, students will be expected upon completing the program to understand and apply one or more modalities of healing, creative production, and/or spiritual practice, as well as to consciously cultivate a career path toward employment and public praxis for an inspired vocation or calling.

Goal Five: Demonstrate Professional Skill

The Women's Spirituality program helps students develop teaching skills grounded in womanist/feminist and integral pedagogies, to be demonstrated through public presentations of scholarly papers or artwork at professional or academic organizations, art exhibits, and other public venues, in a style appropriate to the field or discipline and setting. To ensure that students are prepared to continue contributing to the field of women's spirituality after the dissertation is complete, students will develop a strong ability to articulate ideas in clear academic writing, to be communicated through research projects and/or publishing, and to connect academic studies to grassroots activism, the non-profit sector, and/or other academic venues through community service, internships, workshops, art exhibits, public lectures, and similar events.

Students will be supported in demonstrating leadership and facilitation skills; in facilitating and mediating difficult conversations that emerge through eco-socio-political diversities and/or at public rituals, workshops, and other special events; in developing proficiency in digital research skills as well as visual literacy, used for the presentation of their work; in cultivating good listening skills (online and in the classroom); and in learning to give and receive constructive feedback on academic work. Students will learn to responsibly embody the ethical standards of their profession.