The School of Ecosexual Love – A Work in Progress – Welcome!

The School of Ecosexual Love – A Work in Progress – Welcome!

The School of Ecosexual Love is a work-on-progress to which you’re invited to contribute. Are you wanting to expand and evolve your arts of love? This is a good place for you!

Welcome to our tentative description:

The School of Ecosexual Love is a school of love where life on Gaia in all its forms is the teacher, a teacher that inspires others to practice the arts of love in ways that are natural, ecological, sexy, amorous, diverse, and brave in envisioning new alignments between the health of the planet and the health of the world.

The School of Ecosexual Love offers a variety of educational journeys, including courses, retreats, workshops, and more. All journeys are opportunities for alchemic transformation and for evolution toward more symbiotic ways of being and relating. All offerings include practices that help participants maintain a positive energy field within and around themselves, thus enhancing the alignment of health and happiness in one’s personal and one’s ecosystemic realms.

Educational modalities include online, hybrid, and presential.

Existing courses in the curriculum now include:

—The Resilience of Love is an online journey that has been activated at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and is currently active, with two parallel editions and weekly appointments, Wednesdays 9-11 PM Central EU time in Italian, and Thursday 9-11 PM Central EU time in English.

—The Alchemy of Ecosexual Love is a presential introductory weekend that’s held on a yearly basis at Suncave Garden, a naturist retreat center in Cerveteri, about 30 kilometers from Rome, Italy. This retreat is now scheduled for August 28-30, 2020.

—The Symbiosis of Ecosexual Love is a presential advanced course, which will be launched soon, and could have a beta edition at Suncave Garden starting on August 31, 2020.

The following course could become part of this curriculum:

—The Humanities and Love, Part # 2, from 1500 to the present is a hybrid course that, in its original editions, was taught part presential and part online at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. It consists of nine one-hour lectures in English on world and planetary history, available online on the Serena Anderlini You Tube channel, and of a series of readings, visual presentations, and tests, available online in the LMS portal called Canvas by Instructure.

As a hybrid, the course was active until 2017, and it could be reactivated as an entirely online course. It could be of interest to universities and other institutions of higher learning open to teaching Western Civilization courses organized around the theme of love.

The School of Ecosexual Love operates under the aegis of the non-profit 3WayKiss. We are evolving and in particular, we are in the process of:

–Developing a full-fledged Mission and Vision for this school
–Connecting the school with other similar schools, academies, and universities
–Presenting its offerings more widely in venues open to its approaches
–Activating more courses
–Developing certificates and awards
–Recruiting and retaining interested collaborators, participants, and assistants
–Connecting w/ possible donors and funders

How does any and all of these areas inspire you? In what ways do you think you can participate and contribute? Please get in touch. We’d love to hear. Thank you!

Do you have friends who would appreciate this opportunity? Don’t hesitate to spread the news! Share this post please. Thanks!

For more information and for scheduling, contact Dr. SerenaGaia asfo

dr.serenagaia@gmail.com, serena.anderlini@gmail.com, + 39 3294779406 (whatsapp), Serena Anderlini of Puerto Rico, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Messenger, @serenagaia on Twitter. Thank you!

aka Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
Erstwhile Professor of Humanities and Cinema at UPRM
Convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium
Author of Multiple Books
Contact: serena.anderlini@gmail.com, + 39 329 477 9406.
Academia.edu Profile
LinkedIn Profile
Fellow at the Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs (2012-13)
Project: “Amorous Visions: Ecosexual Perspectives on Italian Cinema”

 

Reinventions – Falling in Love with the Humanities? Si, se Puede! When Basic Education Goes Digital

–Dear Fellow Earthlings–

While teaching a two-semester basic course in the Humanities in the past 10 + years, I’ve evolved a narrative about history that focuses on the Earth and all its people, and a series of readings that deploy the diverse and imaginative ways that humans have practiced the arts of love across time and space.

I feel the multiple crises we face today require that this course go digital.  That way everyone can take it from all over the planet.  I believe that would be a great gift.  It would empower people to make love the ecology of their lives in ways they feel inspired to.

Crises result in successful reinventions when there is openness, trust, collaboration.

–These are difficult to generate in times of crisis, and yet that’s when they are really necessary!

–A very wide support is necessary to evolve.

In this context, I am happy to accept the invitation from UPR Carolina, a small campus in the UPR system, to present my project on March 14.  We start at 11 am in the Teatro:

“Falling in Love with the Humanities?  Si, Se Puede!  Course Design Experiences from the Flipped/Hybrid Classroom.”

Don’t you love the beautiful poster they’ve prepared for me?  It’s really neat and I’m excited about the whole thing.

I believe that the humanities are the sciences that help us understand the belief systems we have.  The arts are the sciences that help us invent the belief systems we need.

And I believe that teaching the Humanities from the Point of View of Love and in a way that students love can get students to fall in love with the humanities, appreciate their significance, and become lifetime learners that will require these courses in their curricula.

In a crisis, reinventions are a path to the future.

Reinventions may be a challenge for large institutions because much agility is needed.

In a smaller context, activating the imagination together may be easier.

When we interpret the Arts and Humanities as sciences that help us understand the present and invent the future we need, we would not remotely consider doing away with them.

And yet, when a university is threatened with losing about one third of its total budget from one year to the next, one has to activate the imagination very quickly for a prayer to save these significant learning tools.

That’s what my proposal does.  The millennial generation loves to learn online.  It’s starved for knowledge they can use to invent the future they need.  What we can give them is a structure that will empower them to learn digitally about these things.  That’s what my course does.

The ways that love has been practiced across time and space are so diverse.  They’re so imaginative.  Learning about them is a way to learn about the beauty and diversity of our species.  And thus acquire the tools to co-design the amorous lives one wishes.

This is the reinvention I propose for a basic, two-semester course that’s part of most university curricula in the US and territories.

It has worked well at UPRM.

I’ve produced the Lectures for the period 1500-2000.

I’ve embedded all tests and learning modules in the Canvas LMS system.

I’ve taught the hybrid/flipped form for one semester, Fall 2016.

I’ve measured the results in a Survey and an Encuesta.

Students have given evidence of their love for the course with direct action as course protectors.  When we had a chance to run the course as hybrid/flipped, we created together this inspiring video.

The project is seeking an open heart space, a campus, ecoversity, or other kind of hospitable institution, eager to see it evolve into the next stage.  This could include producing the Lectures for the period Neolithic to 1500, upgrading the first semester to hybrid/flipped, and upgrading both semesters to MOOC, or massive online open-enrollment course.

Access the pdf print of the presentation “Falling in Love with the Humanities?  Si, Se Puede! ” at this link.  Enjoy!  Imagine the project done.

An investment in this project can accomplish many things at once:

  1. Take a basic course for a walk out of the presential classroom.
  2.  Optimize this course so it can be featured in the world-wide digital sphere.
  3.  Get millennial students to fall in love with the humanities and become lifetime learners.
  4.  Get the university that sponsors this project on the map of those institutions that care about the public and offer basic courses for free.
  5.  Offer potential students from all over the world a taste of this institution and attract them to study at the school and become part of the region.

These all seem very desirable things to me.  They can save money too, while keeping quality and even improving it.  I am investing my energies in these possibilities.

Send good energies and wish the project good luck!

Thank you!

drserenagaia

aka Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

header-per-serena
Professor of Humanities and Cinema
Convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium
Fellow at the Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs (2012-13)
Project: “Amorous Visions: Ecosexual Perspectives on Italian Cinema”

 

Your Experience in Humanities 3112-Hybrid: Humanities and Love

Evaluation Survey Humanities 3112 – Hybrid Fall 2016

The Survey: “Your Experience in Humanities 3112-Hybrid”

šThis anonymous Survey was called “Your Experience in Humanities 3112-Hybrid.”

šThe study measures the quality of the educational experience in the Hybrid Sections of the course Humanities 3112, with thematic organization: Humanities and Love.

šThe Survey assesses the quality of interdependent and integrated elements in the distance and presential  modules of the course which constitute the Hybrid modality.

šThe Survey integrates elements of the experiential segment of the COE (Cuestionario de Opinion Estudiantil), of the “best-practices” empirically formulated by CREAD, and of the Objectives of the Course, as described in the syllabus.

šThe Survey: Characteristics

The course is an integrated study of the Humanities from 1500 to the present.

šRespondents are from the first three sections of the course taught in a Hybrid modality in the Fall of 2016.

šThe Survey was taken anonymously by participating students.

šIt was open on the Canvas LMS portal from November 10 to the 22.

šParticipation was 78.5 {a9d64f7890d157e71e6efcce19e215a5f853c7f4151cde0b7bf7aada464173f6}, with 55 students responding over a total of 70 currently in the course.

šThe Survey has 40 questions, with the results of each reported below.  In-Progress results speak of an overwhelmingly positive experience.  For details skip to penultimate slide.

The Survey is available at this link.

šIn-Progress Results

Event from a first glance to the percentages obtained in the top two options in each questions (Excellent and Very Good), it appears that the Hybrid course was an overwhelmingly positive experience for a vast majority of enrolled students.

šMore specific insights into the “best practices” that work well in this course and other similar courses may be inferred from a more specific analytical observation and discussion of the results in each question and cluster of related questions.

Thank you!

Questions, comments, observations?

 

Practices of Ecosexuality and Sex-Positive Education: Symposium Too

Prácticas de Ecosexualidad y la Educación al Sexo Positivo: Simposio Dos

CALL FOR PROPOSALS – CONVOCATORIA
OPEN NOW – Expires Nov 30, 2016

This event is an EXPLORATION of #ECOSEXUALITY and #SEX-POSITIVITY for the people of Western Puerto Rico, for all interested students, colleagues, community members of UPRM.

• What is #Ecosexuality?
• What is #Sex-Positive #Education?
• Where #Ecosexual #Health and #Love an #Sex-Positive #Education converge?
• How can the #EcosexualMovement and the #Sex-PositiveMovement help us co-create abundant ecosexual health, expression, and love?
• What is the transformative potential of these practices for our ecosystems, our regions, ourselves, and the partner we all share: the Earth?
• How can we bring their excitement and effervescence into our lives, communities, learning practices, and academic discourse?

A bilingual event – Un evento bulingüe
Deseas experimentar el simposio de manera mas profunda? Solicita unirte a nuestro equipo bilingüe
Want to experience the Symposium more deeply? Ask to join our bilingual team

These and more questions will be addressed in three days of symposium activities designed to offer a diversity of participating options.

Suggested topics include:
Ecosex, Sex-Positive Ed, and any or all of the following:
Health, diversity, consent, ecology, intersectionality, amorous behavior, relationships, fluidity, inclusiveness, genders, orientations, colonialism, nature, science, the internet, sex work, the adult industry.

Welcome contributions include:
Panels, videos, keynotes, films, dialogues, staged readings, book presentation, poems, songs, workshops, and more.

WHERE/WHEN:
ANNEX TO THE CAFETERIA (aka SALON TARZAN), RUM, FEB 1-3 – 10 AM – 8 PM
Followed by TE AMO PLAYA AZUL THREE and visits to local initiatives on Feb 4-5

Symposium Too is based on Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires The Arts of Love, Serena Anderlini and Lindsay Hagamen eds. The first world-wide collection of writings on this topic, the book brings together the voices of 30 leaders to converge the multiple energies of the ecosexual movement.

Ecosexuality and Sex-Positivity are global and local movements. We welcome contributors from anywhere they might come. Welcome to Western Puerto Rico, a nature’s paradise in the dry season of February. We support you in enjoying a fun, healthy stay. We regret that we cannot cover travel, accommodation, or ground transportation expenses. We strongly encourage donations that will help us cover homemade meals, tasty and healthy. We will connect you with our generous and helpful welcome team!

Wonder what’s #Ecosexuality, what’s #Sex-Positive #Education? No mystery. Here are some taglines for inspiration:

• The Sex-Positive Movement embraces sexual diversity and expression and emphasizes safe sex and consent. It advocates education to sex and has its roots in the work of Wilhelm Reich.
• Ecosexuals envision the Earth as a lover and Eros as the untapped renewable energy of our time.
• Ecosexuality is the cultural practice that enables our species to reconnect our metabolism to the metabolism of the Earth.
• Ecosexual Love reaches beyond genders, numbers, orientations, ages, races, origins, species, and biological realms, to embrace all of life as a partner with equal rights.
• Make love is the ecology of your life. Love the Earth you make love on.

Abstracts and bios to serena.anderlini@gmail.com. Keep the total under 500 words. November 30 very last day. Make sure you use your favorite language.

This event is part of the multi-clustered project Islas Maravillas: Ecosexuality Education and Extensive Research at UPRM. Interested? Ask us about it.

Join us! Invite your students, colleagues, family, beloveds, neighbors, partners, friends.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook, Twitter, Blog www.serenagaia.org/blog-2/

Lodging and travel info posted to Facebook event, here.

DOWNLOAD the CALL for PROPOSALS here.

Be part of the project!  We look forward to your enthusiasm and participation.

ecosexsymp2-sexposed-2017call-copy

UPDATES–

The Symposium is now also a CURSO CORTO that students at UPRM can take for one credit.

To view and download the course flier go here.

Student will need an enrollment sheet pre-signed by the Director of Humanities.

To view and download the Hoja de Matricula Prefirmada go here.

We hope to see you all at the symposium and course.

In love,

screen-shot-2016-10-09-at-6-00-29-pm

 header3

Yay! May Day and the Experiment of Teaching Justice – “Debts” and Humanities First Hybrid

Dear Earthlings–

Rejoice with me!  Today, May 5th, 2016, I found out the requirement has been waived.  My two first hybrid sessions of H-Humanities 3112, Humanities and Love, are now being offered to all interested UPRM students.  I hear they filled up in a flash.  They’ll start in August.  I’m really happy to offer this service and learning opportunity to students who love to learn online.  Yay!

Read more about the saga below:

Today, April 30th, 2016, marks the first anniversary of my lynching by the Department of Humanities at UPRM.  That was really a very traumatic time.  I felt so bad I wanted to retire.  What was the big fight about?  Teaching in a part-online modality called “hybrid.”  The gory details are in two affidavits filed with the authorities of the campus.

A year later, my priority proposal has been approved of.  Woooow!  It’s H-Humanities 3112, from early modern to present time, with a focus on love.  The historical content– all freshly produced from what I call a public-private alliance between my 3WayKiss non-profit and the UPR–is all online.  It’s now a gift to the creative commons for those who believe in knowledge as love.  Enjoy it here! 

The Department even listened to the Proposal for Revitalization I designed, called “Action.”  The Prezi I made for the occasion is really fun.  You can watch it here: it’s public.  Colleagues listened carefully and a bunch of intelligent questions came after. What a great sign!  The gift economy is rich with imagination, and I do hope new life emanates from this proposal study.

However, as it turns out there is still a caveat.  Apparently, the Office of Academic Affairs now wants me to run a human experiment with my newly approved hybrid modality.  I think it’s a bad idea, and have expressed such.  Why?  Well, for any given course, a presential session must run parallel to any hybrid one.  That’s for purposes of comparison, authorities claim.  But the reality is that when teaching in a hybrid modality, to keep comparable standards and obtain comparable results, one must run a much more complex battery of tests and exams.  Memorization is not what does it.  Appropriate online tests are designed to train students in activating their minds and in thinking about what they’re studying. The tests are super time consuming and could never be run in class.  They really engage students who love to learn online.

So basically the human experiment Academic Affairs recommends is on in which one has to treat one group different from the other.  Now, I’ve never cared to be known as an easy-A professor.  But there hasn’t been a time when students have not found me to be very competent and just.  The hybrid modality I designed intended to alleviate their experience of learning in a degraded environments like our building, infested by dirty air-conditioner filters, fungi, asbestos and rats.  Something from which they suffered just as much as I did.

Now, if I did what Admins recommend,  I would probably risk my reputation as both competent and just, while I would also lose the best students’ trust.  What’s more, this human experiment would probably result in turning young minds off the desire to learn that spontaneously arises from their loving, enchanted minds.  Ouch!

One can certainly tell that the rules for online teaching modalities have NOT been designed by those familiar with the practice.  I can very well teach all my H-Huma 3112 sessions as hybrid next semester.  Students will be delighted, and that’s why I asked.

In a Puerto Rico crumbling under a debt much of which was fraudulently acquired, one would hope that common sense would prevail. There’s plenty of past and future session in the conventional style for comparison.  Wouldn’t this be a great time to support one another, and make the best of what little we have left?

May Day tomorrow is a time when we the people of the island  prepare for gathering in front of the Capitol, in San Juan, to reclaim our right to be treated like citizens.  I have my body sign ready.  It says: The people of Puerto Rico negotiate the debt.  Yes, the people and the land count.  More than whatever mess was engineered by financial capital and is now called “debt.”

A public university has the responsibility of behaving in ways that honor its commitment to knowledge, impartiality, and justice.  Beyond any ill fated or poorly conceived regulations.  I hope the Admins in question model this with their practice.  My right to be a teacher that’s competent and just is sacrosanct.

I have a request out to the Dean of Academic Affairs.   I hope the response comes fast.  Citizenship is a way of being one acquires when one stands by the principle that the laws and rules are made for the people and not vice versa.  Let’s practice that now!

It’s a GO – First Hybrid/Blended Sections of The Humanities and Love at UPRM

Dear world–

The proposal below was approved in April 14th, 2016.  It is for a hybrid/blended edition of the course Humanities 3112, thematically organized as The Humanities from the Point of View of Love.

Two sections of H-Humanities 3112 have been opened for the August 2016, offering.  They filled up quickly.  A third section was opened later, and it filled out as well.  This makes me feel they respond to a need and I’m very happy.

20160818_151641The Fall 2016 semester just started and I feel very happy that students in my courses can actively choose a hybrid/blended modality.  They are very excited to study the Humanities from the Point of View of Love.  My intent for the semester is that in the context of the new modality, the theme and the experience of being in the course align in more effective ways.

It is great to have one’s academic freedom returned.  It makes me love my job again.

I am also very happy about the new administrative stability the department has found under the directorship of Hector Huyke and Jeffrey Herlihy.  This happy resolution and new homeostatic balance was the work of a considerate and tactful colleague, Roberta Orlandini.  I am very grateful to her as well.

Proposal’s Documents–

My Proposal for a Hybrid Edition of an Existing Humanities Course at UPRM is coming up for evaluation.

It required the preparation of a Proposal Package composed of documents and online course materials.

It is the first time that a proposal like this is on the table.  Therefore I am making the whole package accessible here.

Proposal for a Hybrid Edition of Humanities  3112 at this link.

Hybrid Humanities 3112 – Template Syllabus at this link.

Conventional Humanities 3112 – Template Syllabus at this link.

Narrative Comparing Hybrid and Conventional Editions at this link.

Letter of Collaboration from CREAD at this link.

Online Course Content: Nine One-Hour Lectures on Early Modern and Modern History at this link.

Enjoy!

A Final Comment–Let’s Stop Discrimination against Bisexual People

This process started three years ago.   I believe it took so long to get this approval because my department and university are aware of my bisexual orientation (from my research) but not aware of how bisexual people are discriminated in the workplace.  So inadvertently they treated me differently from non-bisexual people.

An article I published in BiTopia (2011) indicates very clearly how bisexual people are typically treated in the workplace.  This type of discrimination is very different from that experienced by most monosexual people, for example, gays and lesbians, who are often oblivious to it, if not inadvertently complicitous.

In most workplaces where awareness of this kind of discrimination is not present, bisexual people are typically considered both “unpromotable” and “unreliable” because they are interpreted as people in-transition, confused, and unstable.  No matter how inconsistent that interpretation may be with reality, bisexual people are discriminated accordingly.  Bisexual people are the largest group in the LGBT spectrum.  We are a large group made to suffer in silence a lot.

I wish this kind of discrimination to stop, for all those it might affect, including myself.  Therefore I am making this article accessible in its pdf form here.

The research was conducted by Heidi Bruins Greens, Nicholas Payne, and Jamison Green.  Blessings to their efforts!

If you’re not aware of discrimination patterns against bisexual people, here’s a great opportunity to educate yourself.

Thank you.

Enjoy!

Revised August 22, 2016

 

Ecosexuality: When Ecology and Sexuality Come Together – In January 2011 at UPRM

Ecosexuality: When Ecology and Sexuality Come Together
Ecosexualidad: cuando la ecologia y la sexualidad se encuentran

Este CURSO NUEVO es un seminario avanzado en las Humanidades que se ofrecera en enero 2011.

It is dedicated to exploring ecosexuality, a movement, orientation, practice, and a theory of love.

What is ecosexuality?  How did the concept come about and why it matters?  How can it help us to explore the intersections between ecology and sexuality, science and the humanities, global and personal health and love?  How does ecosexuality intersect with other orientations and practices of love, including those common among gays, bis, straights, polys, swingers, metrosexuals, and so on?  How does ecosexuality contribute to defining our relationship to the environment, to technology, the natural elements, and the web of life that sustains our species?  Is nature our enemy, mother, hostess, all of the above? 
      Books and films in the assigned list may include: Sexual Fluidity, by Lisa Diamond; Sex at Dawn, by Christopher Ryan and Calcida Jetha; Gaia and the New Poltics of Love, by Serena Anderlini; Polyamory in the 21st Century, by Deborah Anapol; Mystery Dance, by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan; Microcosmos and Acquiring Genomes by Lynn Margulis; Sirens, by John Duigan; Shortbus, by John Cameron Mitchell; An Inconvenient Truth, by Davis Guggenheim; Sluts and Goddesses, by Annie Sprinkle; and House of Numbers by Brent Leung.

Dr. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, gave the opening remarks at the world’s first Symposium on Ecosexuality in Los Angeles on Oct 24, 2010.  She is the author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love, a seminal text of ecosexual theory.  She blogs at http://polyplanet.blogspot.com
       Excellent reading knowledge of English necessary, Spanish used in class.  
       Research paper expected at end of course.
       !Una oportunidad de no perder!
Offered as Humanities 4995 to begin in January 2011, Tues and Thurs at 5-6:15 PM.
Enroll: see Dr. Noemi Maldonado, Associate Director, Department of Humanities, Chardon 504, Noemi.maldonado@upr.edu
Email questions for Dr. Anderlini at serena.anderlini@gmail.com

The Earth as Lover, art credit to Megan Morman and Cindy Baker.

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com