We are thrilled to announce that the keynote speaker for the 2023 Mythologium will be Dr. Emily Lord-Kambitsch. Building on last year’s theme of ecological consciousness, and directly addressing this year’s theme of Myth and the Heart, Emily’s presentation will discuss Ovid’s Metamorphoses from an ecopsychological and posthumanist perspective. We appreciate how posthumanism takes humans and non-humans into account, embracing a world far bigger than just us people. Read on for the abstract of Emily’s talk.
Becoming Heart-less: Mythic Metamorphoses and the Posthuman
As humans, we are heart-carriers, and there is a certain anthropocentrism inherent in the human quest for a heart-centered relationship with the world through story. But the world we inhabit contains countless sensate organisms who do not have hearts, but whose subjective experience is nevertheless imagined, recorded, and transmitted through myth and folklore in sensory, psychological, moral, and spiritual terms that we can understand.
The Roman poet Ovid’s epic, Metamorphoses, offers many tales of human or humanoid creatures undergoing transformation into non-human (and some heart-less) beings. Treating examples from this text through a dual perspective of ecopsychology and posthumanism, we will seek to understand how myths offer a way for us to observe ourselves in contact with the mysterious subjectivities of the “heart-less” beings in our world, from plants and stones to the ever-listening Amazon Alexa housed in the corner of the living room, through the capacities of the human heart.
About Emily
A lifelong poet-storyteller and student of ancient Mediterranean languages and literature, Emily Lord-Kambitsch, PhD is Co-Chair and Associate Core faculty in the Mythological Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She teaches courses in Greco-Roman myth, ritual studies, memoir and self-writing, research approaches, and dissertation formulation. Outside of Pacifica she leads workshops in “Mythic Movement,” a practice of personal myth-making through deep listening and intuitive movement. Emily is passionate about supporting students’ connection with the perennial stories that call to them through academic, artistic, and personal lenses.