Monica Mody

Monica Mody

Degrees

  • Ph.D., East-West Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies
  • M.F.A., Creative Writing, University of Notre Dame

Dr. Monica Mody is a Core Professor in the Mythological Studies with Emphasis in Depth Psychology Program, and a transdisciplinary scholar, educator, and poet at the intersections of liminal knowing/language, earth-based wisdom, and decolonial frameworks of wholeness. She comes to her teaching and writing as a border-crossing and cross-genre practitioner. She is the author of Bright Parallel (Copper Coin), Kala Pani (1913 Press), and three chapbooks including Ordinary Annals (above/ground). Her academic writing has been published in the peer-reviewed Transformative Power of Art Journal, Tarka Journal, The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature, and Integral Review. Her poetry has won awards including the Sparks Prize, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, and the TOTO Award. She has presented widely, including at El Mundo Zurdo, the Parliament of World Religions, American Academy of Religion Western Region, Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, and Oakland Summer School. She has also been invited to share her poetry at venues including the South Asian Literature & Arts Festival, Poetry with Prakriti, Trauma and Catharsis Symposium on Performing the Asian Avant-Garde, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Her doctoral dissertation, which investigated decolonial feminist consciousness in South Asian borderlands, was selected for the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology conferred by the Association for the Study of Women Mythology. Among the other honors she has received are the Cultural Integration Fellowship Integral Scholarship from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Dr. Mody was born in Ranchi, India.