Kimberly B. George, Ph.D.
 Feminism School Founder

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 | academic researcher | psychosocial trauma theorist | contemplative practitioner | 

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New Course: Coming Spring 2021

Intersections of Identity: Practices of Contemplative Feminism


Our world needs great healing.

The dismantling of racial and religious supremacies, empire, and conquest.

The flourishing of all genders into feminist freedom.

A deep reckoning with Indigenous rights, decolonization, and the earth.

Spirituality grounded in joy and justice.

And an unleashing of ancient economies of interconnection.

What is so powerful...

about returning to the writings of feminist foremothers...

 is that they have been studying for decades these interconnected struggles. 

And they left for us an inheritance of women's knowledge about how to transform our world.

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(Imagine if more leaders were trained in this inheritance?)



Why do Feminist Leadership Training?

  • *Women's intellectual history is revolutionary knowledge that has been systematically silenced. When we turn toward that knowledge with presence and attention, we receive a wellspring of creative power and healing. (*Use of the term at our school is trans inclusive, always.)

  • We teach principles that reconnect the mind, body, and spirit as we learn and as we unlearn. The awakenings within our learning then become portals of creative transformation. We learn how to build coalitions across difference—as we engage entwined systems of power (patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy, etc.).

  • This holistic process also helps us re-think (and re-feel, re-sense, & re-imagine) the very meaning of what education is. Our feminist practices embody new and ancient ways of understanding knowledge, social change, healing, and leadership.


The Learning Experience:

1:1, Small-Group, & Large Group Cohorts

For individual leaders or organizations ready to foster a culture of feminist leadership, Dr. George offers customized Feminist Leadership Training Programs. These trainings are for all genders.

Distinct from other professional development programs, participants receive holistic methods of learning for graduate level education and 1:1 mentorship in gender studies, critical race studies, ethnic studies, etc. The learning is customized to your specific sets of vocational goals, such that artists, business leaders, political actors, and religious leaders can each live out, in distinct ways, their study of feminist foremothers.

While this work is not therapy, many participants express that the reading, internal reflection, contemplative practices, and mentorship in these programs hold deeply healing components, individually and inter-generationally.

(Spots are limited, as we assess readiness and bandwidth for the deep work.)

Feminist Leadership Training Courses

(Available for leadership programs for organizations and 1:1 mentorships.)

The Invitation...

At Feminism School, you are invited to learn the transformative texts 
of feminist history and theory. 

The language of "theory" can feel distancing.
BUT... feminist theory isn't about being elite and academic. 

It's about the fact that feminist writers, scholars, and artists have given us language and images for the realities we live within.

It's about recognizing that most of our education systematically denied us their voices.

(Over and over, participants in our trainings say, "Thank you for the language.")

The language offered is rooted in Dr. George's devotion to studying the texts of feminist history so these knowledges can be passed on.

The language cuts through gaslighting.

The language connects you to your body.

The language honors community-based power.

The Methods of Change:

Grief + New Language +Creativity = Transformation

We teach practices to feel and process the grief of violent structures (like patriarchy and white supremacy), while supporting ways to move that grief into creative power and collective change. This approach carefully integrates: trauma studies, spiritually-informed frameworks, identity and intergenerational healing work, creative rituals, and somatic-contemplative practices.

To foster this deep learning, we teach across a breadth and depth of rigorous feminist intellectual history—from Black studies, to ethnic studies, to postcolonial, to Indigenous feminism, to Chicana, to Arab and Jewish feminisms. Self-study courses are available, or Feminist Leadership Training programs offer 1:1 and small group training in feminist learning that prepares you to lead and teach others in your respective vocation and area of influence.

The Practices:

Contemplative Feminist Writing

Dr. George's academic research is in how contemplative writing practices, as rooted in feminist history, bring into conscious realms knowledge which has been held at subconscious and unconscious levels in our body. Using carefully designed, trauma-informed contemplative writing practices, students in Feminist Leadership Training programs learn how to root into their own experience and identity and move into modes of expansion and emergence.

The result is not only a more anchored and integrated sense of creative power, but also the co-creation of coalitions across differences of identity that catalyze collective change, healing, and accountability.

Meet the founder.

Dr. Kimberly B. George

 What has been your training to teach across so many fields of research?

My academic training was unusually extensive. I read and wrote voraciously in 5 graduate programs across 15 years studying counseling psychology, religious history, gender studies, and ethnic studies!  I developed a unique and rigorous body of knowledge that I offer through Feminism School. Among my degrees, I hold a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego and an M.A. in Religion from Yale University, where I was a merit scholar and postgraduate fellow. 


How long have you built programs to teach feminist theory outside the traditional university?

 I have been offering Feminist Leadership Trainings since 2006, though 2011 was a turning point into hybrid models of online learning. I take immense joy in collaborating with people who are not academics but who want access to feminist education in a holistic way that supports their own life goals and spheres of influence.


Where do you reside?

I am at heart bi-coastal, but I live and work in NYC. 


Why do you wear vintage clothes so much? 

I love the textures of vintage fabrics the way that I love the texts of feminist foremothers!


Why do you do the work that you do as a scholar-activist-artist?

I am a mystic and an empath with a deep need for intellectual rigor and creative expression. I sense the world's possibilities for healing deep in my body—and I believe centering the writings of feminist history propels us into imagining and creating a better present and future.

 

What are your favorite things?

 I like contemplative reading and coffee, meditation and walking Manhattan, and improv dance. Also, I was a gymnast, and I love embodied contemplative practices, like yoga and handstand work.


What are your writing projects? 

My first academic book, Football, Culture, and Power, was on football and social theory. My next academic book is on feminist pedagogy and contemplative writing.  I wish to be a writer of speculative fiction meets feminist spiritual memoir (that book is underway, too).  

 Read more at kimberlybgeorge.com.

When we study feminist ways of knowing...

... we connect back to our body's knowledge and birth our voice.

 

But we also listen with more skill to the stories of others, understanding intersections and connections.


We move from naming the symptoms of a problem to recognizing the deeper systems.

 

And we learn to trust our creativity, recognizing we are empowered—collectively— to rewrite the course of history.


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