Meandering Press is at the beginnings of curating a new series of books called Mythic Edges: essays of the prickly bits of myth and its study.
Mythology is a big, glorious, powerful, ambiguous, often-misunderstood land of story and metaphor, of how we make meaning, and how we try to glean it from the world around us. It has sat fairly relegated to the sidelines in contemporary Western culture (conflating myths and lies, for example), but it continues to shape us.
Its study is sometimes big, sometimes powerful, sometimes ambiguous, and wrestles with some of the deepest issues of identity, meaning, and how scholarship intersects with the cultures within which it resides.
We’re going to dive off the board, into the deeper end of the pool, and swim with some of its challenges. (We are hoping for grace, but it’s entirely possible there will be big splashes of belly flops…)
The first three works we’re dreaming are:
Mything Gender
How the study of myth must learn to challenge stereotypes and flat thinking about identity, gender, archetypes, and power, and why. (Hint: because patriarchy.)
Binary Thinking is Wrong!
How myth can help us past the pitfalls of right/wrong binary thinking, and why that matters. Including both challenging and learning from bad people who have good ideas. How can we hold cultural standards of equity and clarity and truth while acknowledging our imperfections, and those of scholars before us.
Colonialism in Myth and the Academy
How can mythologists and lovers of mythology learn from stories beyond our own mythic canons while still understanding the toxicity of assuming ownership of others’ mythic imaginations?
Stay tuned for more news as we get to work!
