Offering two rigorous academic programs at CIIS:
🌀 M.A. Women, Gender, Spirituality and Social Justice
🌀 Ph.D Women’s Spirituality and Ph.D.
The online Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) offers rigorous M.A. degrees located at the intersection of Women/Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Philosophy, and Religion. Our curriculum incorporates scholarship from women and gender studies, ethnic studies, religious studies, philosophy, and other related fields. We do not espouse a singular spiritua
06/15/2026
The words available to us shape what we can say about our health — and what care we can ask for and receive. Language and Health in Action, a new book co-edited by Women’s Spirituality program chair Dr. Anna Corwin, takes a cross cultural look at how language and health are inseparable. Out now! More at the link in our bio. 📕
What does theoretical physics have to do with motherhood? For M.A. graduate Ariel Rich, everything. Her capstone presentation, Where Time is Held: The Maternal Ethos and Mystical Ontology, draws on fractal geometry, quantum entanglement, and feminist and womanist theory to reframe time as relational and spiralic rather than linear or fixed.
Watch her full presentation on YouTube — link in bio.
06/08/2026
Thinking about applying to our M.A. or Ph.D. programs? Join us this summer for an information session and get your questions answered directly by faculty.
Upcoming dates:
🗓 Thursday, June 11 · 5:30 pm PT — Summer Info Fair with Sundari Johansen
🗓 Thursday, July 9 · 12 pm PT — with Alka Arora
🗓 Tuesday, August 4 · 2 pm PT — with Alka Arora
Click here to register: https://tr.ee/HQ6Q6uAVpg
Another clip from our Capstone Colloquium: Logan Soderling on decolonial death studies. Logan’s work is guided by a commitment to honoring lived experience and leaving the planet better than they found it — including in how we relate to death. Their presentation, Decolonial Death Studies: Death as Reclamation, examines how the US funeral industry, shaped by colonial violence and corporate profit, separated us from death as a communal practice. This clip is Logan’s vision of what reclamation looks like.
Congratulations, Logan. Watch the full presentation on YouTube — link in bio.
Meet Natalie Hessell, one of our graduating M.A. students in Women, Gender, Spirituality and Social Justice — and soon, a Ph.D. student in Women’s Spirituality at CIIS! Natalie is a lactation consultant and scholarship fellow whose interests center on language, the divine feminine, and equity. Her capstone presentation, Gender, Language, and our Concept of the Divine, discusses how the names we hold for the divine influence what we believe about ourselves. This is how she ends it.
Congratulations, Natalie. Full presentation on YouTube — link in bio.
Meet Dionne Scott-Boissard, one of our graduating M.A. students in Women, Gender, Spirituality and Social Justice. Dionne is a licensed psychotherapist and the founder of Peace of Mind Mental Wellness Services, committed to helping people heal from generational trauma and step into their own worthiness. Her capstone presentation, Remembering the Divine Mother: An Ancestral Journey from Generational Trauma to Worthiness, follows six years of ancestral work across two continents. This clip is from her experience in Ghana, where she received her ancestral name. Watch her full presentation on YouTube. Link in bio.
05/26/2026
This weekend, our 2026 MA graduates marked the end of their time in the program. Some traveled to attend our Spring retreat and graduation celebration.
Congratulations to Maury Boswell, Tori Hoffman, Jessica Nunez-LaMarre, Hailey Poarch Morgan, Goddess Queen Jahmela Assata, Natalie Hessell, Ariel Rich, Dionne Scott-Boissard, Maya Stroud, and Samantha Turner — and welcome to the alumnae community. 🎓
Our M.A. Capstone Colloquium is where graduating students in the Women, Gender, Spirituality and Social Justice program share the work they’ve built across their time in the program. In this clip of Tori Hoffman’s presentation, Sensuality: An Embodied Approach to Healing, Tori draws on Audre Lorde and somatic practice to ask how connecting to the body creates the conditions for healing — and for justice. Tori is a creative marketing professional whose work is rooted in helping people find paths of connection through embodied practice and intuition.
Congratulations, . Watch the full May 5 presentation on YouTube — link in bio.
05/18/2026
The semester has ended, which means different things for different people in our programs — a real rest, a summer intensive, dissertation writing, a breath before fall. Wherever this finds you: well done. 🩷
We will keep sharing from the WSE community all summer, so follow along!
05/04/2026
Meet Natalia, our new social media assistant! She’s a first-year PhD student in the program. Natalia brings 20 years of experience in communications and international development and is a salsa and bachata dancer. She’s getting to know the community and would genuinely love your input — what’s missing from our pages? What would you like to see more of? Send us a DM.