Mary Beth Moser, Ph.D. earned a doctorate in Philosophy and Religion, with a concentration in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she teaches. Mary Beth has traveled widely doing research for more than 30 years in her ancestral homeland of Italy. She is the author of Honoring Darkness: Exploring the Power of Black Madonnas in Italy (2008) and numerous articles including “Hidden No More: The Black Madonna Adonai of Sicily” in the anthology of feminist writings She Is Everywhere (2005); and “Blood Relics: Menstrual Roots of Miraculous Black Madonnas in Italy” published in Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture.  When Mary Beth is not traveling the back roads of Italy, she resides among the natural beauty and tall trees of the Pacific Northwest.

Mary Beth acknowledges that she lives on an island that was the traditional home and the ancestral lands of the sx̌ʷəbabš Coast Salish, the island’s first people, who were forcibly removed and relocated. Their historical relationship with the land continues today. Mary Beth honors the sx̌ʷəbabš past and present, and the land itself.

See more images and research on Black Madonnas in Italy and beyond at DEA MADRE on Facebook, which Mary Beth maintains. Mary Beth shares her ancestral research focused on Trentino, Italy on her site Ancestral Connections.