With emphasis on Transdisciplinarity, Arts-Based Research and the value of psychological creativity for activism, Dr.s Susan Rowland and Mary A. Wood will discuss the three pillars of the Engaged Humanities M.A . degree and how they provide unique opportunities in a post-COVID 19 landscape.
Masters in Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life with Emphasis in Depth Psychology:
Our world is characterized by ecological and social challenges as well as technological change. Only a community with exceptionally creativity skills can thrive in such conditions. Pacifica’s M.A. Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life is a Masters in Depth Psychology and Creativity that is specifically designed to enable students to meet these challenges.
The Creative Life
With a framework of Jungian psychology, this hybrid Masters in Humanities fosters creativity in a uniquely effective way by drawing upon those aspects of the human psyche neglected by the constructs of post-industrial western modernity. The 21st century needs far more than the highly rationalized and mechanistic thinking perfected in the industries and sciences of the twentieth century. It also needs the imagination, capacity for the new, intuitive insight into other cultures and what is not yet fully known, the ability to dream and especially the ability to engage in deep and free flowing creative collaboration.
Expanding creativity is the core of the degree by offering a Masters in Humanities that is oriented to the creative imagination, meaning the talent for making new, for re-thinking traditional structures, for deep listening to what is said and unsaid, for generating images for the not yet known or conceived, for the ability to work so intensely with others that shared visioning and collaborative worlds are made and re-made. This Masters in Creativity is for those who want to be artists, and artists of their own lives. It is above all for those who want to be artists of our future world.
A Unique Hybrid Program
Therefore our unique hybrid Masters in Humanities and Creativity program has three foundations: the humanities as engaged in making culture; depth and Jungian psychology treating the psyche or soul as an intensely creative organ, and creative practice as a way of developing being human and engaging with the world. For all who want to realize their creative potential in the twenty-first century, the M.A. Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life seeks those of you who want to join a creative program not so much of the world; but for it!
Students go on to live and work more creatively, or foster creativity in themselves and others including anyone in the visual, performing, narrative, studio, and media arts; the creative side of advertising, marketing, and product development; teachers of art, literature, and the humanities; or professionals in fields such as architecture, interior design, fashion, and the film, television, and music industries.
Learn more at: https://www.pacifica.edu/degree-program/engaged-humanities/
Mary Antonia Wood is Co-Chair of the Engaged Humanities and Creative Life program, and the owner of Talisman Creative Mentoring, a practice that supports artists and creators of all types. Through one-on-one consultations, group workshops and classes, Wood assists creative individuals who desire a stronger and more authentic connection to the deepest archetypal sources of creativity. Wood has been a visual artist for over twenty years, working in a variety of media. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and has been collected by both public institutions and individuals. In addition, she has collaborated with writers and artists on public art commissions. Wood received her doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute where her thesis was entitled, “The Archetypal Artist: Re-imagining Artistic Expression at the Crossroads of Fate and Free Will.” Wood is currently at work on a book for Routledge based on her doctoral and post-doctoral research on the archetypal forces that shape a creative life.
Susan is Chair of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life MA, earned her Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle and her MAs from the University of London and Oxford University. She was the first Chair of the International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS). She is author of many studies of Jung, literary theory and gender including C.G. Jung and Literary Theory (1999), Jung: A Feminist Revision (2002), Jung as a Writer (2005), and also edited Psyche and the Arts (2008). Another recent book is C.G. Jung and the Humanities (2010), showing how Jung’s work is a response to the creative, psychological, spiritual, philosophical and ecological crises of our age. In 2012 her book, The Ecocritical Psyche: Literature, Complexity Evolution and Jung was published by Routledge, showing how the Jungian symbol is a portal to nature. Susan’s work is not so much “about” Jung as an attempt to develop his special insights into myth, technology, the feminine, nature and the numinous for today’s wounded world.
