Women’s Health & Urban Life

The cover reflects my own vision of what the Women’s Health & Urban Life: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal is about, combined with the sophisticated creative and technological skills of a professional friend, Dr. David Hillock.

In the cover, we tried to capture the element of “urbanization” through the selection of exceptionally well-known images from different corners of the world. Clockwise, images of the Blue Mosque, The Sydney Opera House, Taj-Mahal, Christ of Rio, the CN Tower, Hundred Flowers Tower of

Funded by the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

About the Cover

Nanchang, The Tower Bridge, Kremlin, Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty circle an early statue of Bastet (from around 2800 BC).

For those who may need a little brushing up of their knowledge in mythology, Bastet (a.k.a Bast) is an ancient Egyptian goddess who was originally depicted as a lioness, but eventually took the form of a woman with a cat’s head or a full cat. Bastet was the daughter of RA (the most powerful god of ancient Egypt a.k.a RE) and revered as the “Eyes of RA”. Over about two millennia, Bastet became associated with the moon, and in her revised depictions, took on the form of a complete domesticated cat as opposed to her female lioness image of the past. Whether in her earlier form or in her visual transformation into a domesticated cat-headed goddess, Bastet has been worshipped by ancient Egyptians as the goddess of healing, protector of the young, the watcher over the weak and provider of earthly powers of health. In the cover, we tried to juxtapose the rounded, asymmetrical, earthy, primal and powerful figure of Bastet on the exclusively man-made (sic), towering, phallacised symbols of iron, steel, concrete, glass and clay.

I hope, you will like the cover as much as we do as an intriguing entree to a scholarly journey of manuscripts on women’s health within the context of urban, globalizing life.

- Professor Aysan Sev’er