Taught online via Zoom
Wednesdays, April 24 - May 22, 2024
7 - 9 pm EST (NYC time)
$150 Patreon Members / $175 General Admission

Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time.

This five-part series offers an introduction to Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004), a Chicana-tejana poet-philosopher, artist, spiritual activist, and author whose work boldly challenges consensus reality and inspires us to enact new forms of creativity with which we can transform ourselves and our worlds. Through an investigation of Anzaldúa’s theories of creativity, we explore questions like these: What’s the relationship between imagination, identity, embodiment, and transformation? How can inspiration and art-making facilitate individual and collective healing? How can we use spiritual technologies to support our creative work? How can meditation, art-making, and magic facilitate social justice? Participants will leave this series with renewed enthusiasm for their artistic, creative, and intellectual practices, as well as specific strategies to uplift and support themselves and others.

A key figure in the creation of Border Studies and queer theory, Anzaldúa was an internationally-acclaimed independent scholar, cultural theorist, creative writer, and social-justice activist. Anzaldúa’s work spans multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, theoretical and philosophical essays, innovative autobiographical narratives, edited collections, and children’s books. For more on Anzaldúa see her website: gloriaeanzaldua.com.

Although Anzaldúa is well-known for her contributions to literary studies and critical theory, the most innovative dimensions of her work--her lifelong interest in (and use of) esoteric wisdom traditions–have received far less attention. This series shifts the focus. It spotlights Anzaldúa’s fusion of “witching with politicking” and creativity with magic, or what she called spiritual activism.  The point is not simply to explore Anzaldúa’s radical approach to creativity but also to apply Anzaldúa’s insights to our own lives and art-making. Each session combines lecture, discussion, and application with ample time for Q & A.

 Session One: Introducing Gloria Anzaldúa

 “My soul makes itself through the creative act. It is constantly remaking and giving birth to itself through my body.” 
—Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

 This session offers an intimate exploration of Anzaldúa’s life, focusing on some of the most innovative dimensions. It situates her key texts and theories in the larger context of her biography; lays the foundation for the following weeks; and introduces Anzaldúa’s unique dialogic creative process, spiritual technologies, and oracular research.

Session Two: Diving into Identity’s Cauldron

"Growing up I felt that I was an alien from another planet dropped on my mother's lap. But for what purpose? The mixture of bloods and affinities, rather than confusing or unbalancing me, has forced me to achieve a kind of equilibrium. Both cultures deny me a place in their universe. Between them and among others, I build my own universe, El Mundo Zurdo. I belong to myself and not to any one people.”
—“La Prieta”

Anzaldúa defined herself broadly, in relation to both the human and the beyond-human worlds, the chthonic and the stellar. Drawing on her personal experiences, she developed an innovative metaphysical approach to individual and collective identity that inspired her creativity and shaped her art. This session explores Anzaldúa’s metaphysics of radical interconnectedness; examines her theories of identity and art-making (e.g., autohistoria, autohistoria-teoría, and el mundo zurdo); and offers a number of ways participants can work with and apply these theories.

Session Three: Enacting Poet-Shaman Aesthetics

“Because we use metaphors as well as hierbitas or curing stones to effect changes, we follow in the tradition of the shaman. Like the shaman, we transmit information from our consciousness to the physical body of another. If we're lucky we create, like the shaman, images that induce altered states of consciousness conducive to self-healing.”

—“Metaphors in the Tradition of the Shaman”

Drawing on Nahuatl, alchemical, and other spirit traditions, Anzaldúa developed a profound theory and praxis of art-making and inspiration which she described in a variety of ways. This session introduces Anzaldúa’s theories of creativity and imagination (e,g., el cenote, Coyolxauhqui, the Coyolxauhqui Process, la facultad); examines her personal approaches to art-making; and suggests practices that we can develop to foster creativity.

Session Four: Working with la musa bruja

“I say mujer mágica, empty yourself. Shock yourself into new ways of perceiving the world, shock your readers into the same. Stop the chatter inside their heads.”
—“Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To 3rd World Women Writers”

Through an investigation of Anzaldúa’s studies in nagualismo, magic, and esoteric wisdom traditions (astrology, Sabian symbols, I Ching, Tarot, etc.), this session investigates the expansive role of the magical and nonordinary realities in Anzaldúa’s work and offers creative possibilities for some of the ways we can apply these insights to our own lives and creative projects.

Session Five: Recreating Our Selves

“Inherent in the creative act is a spiritual, psychic component--one of spiritual excavation, of (ad)venturing into the inner void, extrapolating meaning from it and sending it out into the world. To do this kind of work requires the total person--body, soul, mind, and spirit.”

This informal session functions as an electronic potluck in which we tie up loose ends and plot future directions. Bring what you want. Share what you’ve learned. Show us your art or creative projects. And, of course, feel free to ask questions, chat, speculate, build new coalitions, and dream new worlds into existence.

AnaLouise Keating is a professor of Multicultural Women's & Gender Studies at Texas Woman's University, teaching courses on Womanist Spiritual Activism, Gloria Anzaldúa, and related topics. Keating is the author, editor, or-co-editor of twelve books, most recently: The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook and Transformation Now! Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change. Driven by the desire to bring esoteric/occult and Indigenous wisdom traditions into progressive social change and academic spaces, Keating’s work focuses on Transformation Studies (Womanist Spiritual Activism, Post-Oppositionality, Invitational Pedagogies, and U.S. Women-of-Colors Theories), with a special emphasis on Gloria Anzaldúa, with whom Keating has worked since the early 1990s. Keating also teaches Yin Yoga and edits a book series, Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, & Indigenous Studies, at the University of Illinois Press. You can learn more about AnaLouise at analouisekeating.com

Images: 1) Statue of Coatlicue displayed in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, circa 1400 AD (?) 2) Portrait of Gloria Anzaldúa