Max Dashu

Maxine Hammond, known professionally as Max Dashu, (born 1950 in the United States) is an American feminist historian, blogger and artist. In 1970, she founded the Suppressed Histories Archives, a collection of over 14,000 slides she has photographed and 100 slideshows she has created on global women's history, archaeology, Goddess traditions, female priests and female shamans.^[1][2] She has presented these slideshows throughout North America for over 40 years.^[1]

Career

Dashu makes feminist paintings, posters and prints. Her art has appeared in Daughters of the Moon Tarot, in books by Judy Grahn, Diane Stein, and Martha Shelley, and in her own Witch Dream Comix (1975), as well as in many feminist, lesbian, and pagan publications over the years.^[2][3] She has been influential in opening up space for consideration of egalitarian matrilineages through her critique of Cynthia Eller's book "The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory" (2000), which critique is titled "Knocking Down Straw Dolls" (2000), and republished in Feminist Theology 13.2 (2005), Sage Publications, UK.^[1] She has also written many feminist blog posts.^[4] Her movie "Women's Power" has been screened in the US, Britain, Netherlands, Italy, and Australia; it shows women's history throughout the world.^[5]

Trivia

On the eve of the 2008 election, shaman Vicki Noble convoked an All Hallows Eve procession through the streets of San Francisco, and along with Dashu, Krissy Keefer, Starhawk and others, created a gathering of wild women and yoginis to call in the power of change and social justice; Dashu made a poster to commemorate this event, using a photo of dancing skeleton dakinis in Tibet taken by Vicki Noble.^[6]

References