The Feminine

EDUCATION: Ph.D. (c), Consciousness and Transformative Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, 2014-Present. Expected Graduation Date: May 20, 2017 Thesis Title: "Poem as Prismatic Self: Emily Dickinson's Mythopoeic Genesis." Brief Synopsis of Research: A trailblazer of American Individualism, Emily Dickinson creates mythopoeia as agency in her creation of the prismatic self. Dickinson's mythopoeic power is elucidated within a transdisciplinary lens employing mimesis, phenomenology and semiotics in witness of a new myth of self-reliance. This study welcomes the intersection of science and literature, considering the overlapping analytical lenses of suppositions on consciousness, chaos and order as are prevalent in system theory and linguistics and various aspects of literary theory.

The feminine became a topical theme in European and hence Bulgarian culture with the outbreak of World War I. The male portion of the population went to the front and women found themselves filling social positions that had previously been considered as predominantly male. However, this led to a series of changes in the public mentality, as well as to attempts to make sense of this change. The late 1920s were also the time when the first female professional writer appeared in Bulgaria. The present paper analyzes in detail how this occurred. It examines the theme of the feminine as found in the pages of Iztok (East) newspaper, published by the Sagittarius Circle. In the broadest terms, this question is examined in three aspects: Women and the Great Artists – Goethe, Nietzsche, Wagner; 2. Female Artists – Zinaida Gippius, Ellen Key, Olive Schreiner, Selma Lagerlöf and others; and 3. Woman as a public-social phenomenon. The general approaches taken to the themes include: women and war; women and reform, women and alienation, women and artistic creation.