Monica Mody

Dr. Monica Mody is a Core Professor in the Mythological Studies with Emphasis in Depth Psychology Program. Her areas of specialization include decolonial, indigenous, and women of color paradigms and epistemologies; Anzaldúan frameworks; earth-sourced and feminist spirituality and ritual; poetry, divination, oracular speech, and arts-based research; and nondual embodiment, in conversation with ancestral lineages from South Asia. She is the author of the full-length poetry collections Wild Fin (Weavers Press, 2024) and Bright Parallel (Copper Coin, 2023), the cross-genre Kala Pani (1913 Press, 2013), as well as three chapbooks including Ordinary Annals (above/ground, 2021).

Dr. Mody’s academic publications include peer-reviewed articles in the Transformative Power of Art Journal and Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis, as well as essays in Tarka Journal and The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled “Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-secular South Asian Borderlands: A Critical Hermeneutics and Autohistoria/teoría for Decolonial Feminist Consciousness,” was selected for the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology conferred by the Association for the Study of Women Mythology. She has presented widely, including at the El Mundo Zurdo Conference, the Parliament of World Religions, the Center for Black and Indigenous Praxis at CIIS, American Academy of Religion-Western Region, Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, and Oakland Summer School. She has discussed her work on KPFA-FM, Parabola, TV Santa Barbara’s The Creative Community, Mythic Podcast, and Deep Water Initiative: Religion & Ecology Podcast, among other media.

Her poetry has been selected for honors including the Sparks Prize Fellowship (University of Notre Dame), the Zora Neale Hurston Award (Naropa University), and the TOTO Award for Creative Writing; it can be found in numerous international journals and anthologies. Venues that have invited her to share her poetry include the South Asian Literature & Arts Festival, Poetry with Prakriti, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the Trauma and Catharsis Symposium on Performing the Asian Avant-Garde, the CIIS Women’s Spirituality Program, and Delta Mouth Literary Festival.