FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Micki Leventhal, 312-344-7383
October 13, 2005
INTERSECTIONS CONTINUES WITH "FROM VISIONARY EXPERIENCE TO SPIRITUAL LIFE: ENTHEOGENIC PLANTS AND CHEMICALS"
Expert Panel Explores Cultural Contexts and Meanings of Psychedelic Substances
NOTE: Silverstein, Gillogly and Roberts are available for interviews.
Chicago, October, 2005--The term entheogenic is derived from roots for "god-within" or "spirit-facilitating." The second Intersections presentation of this fall season will seek to open for public discussion the use of psychoactive sacramental plants and chemical substances. Each member of the panel brings a different perspective to the spiritual promise and social problems that society finds in such substances as marijuana, peyote and opium.
Columbia College Chicago Professor Louis Silverstein has invited Professor Thomas Roberts of Northern Illinois University and Kathleen Gillogly of Columbia College Chicago to share their research and participate in an open discussion with the audience. The program, entitled From Visionary Experience to Spiritual Life: Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals, will take place at 6 p.m. Wednesday November 2, in the First Floor West Meeting Room of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. Admission is free. For more information, call 312-744-6630 or visit www.intersections.colum.edu.
Kathleen Gillogly (University of Michigan Ph.D. candidate and Columbia College faculty member) will describe her research in Northern Thailand among peasant farmers whose cash crop for the last 175 years, opium, is now illegal. She will share some of the difficulties of performing her field research, as well as the effect of the United Nations drug interdiction policy on the local populace. Gillogly has studied human ecology, development and kinship in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and the Solomon Islands and has published widely in anthropological journals. Her many honors include a Fullbright-Hayes Fellowship for her dissertation research.
Thomas Roberts, Ph.D. (Stanford) will discuss his research in psychedelic studies, particularly their uses in spiritual mind development. He will explore the potential impact of widely accessible primary religious experience through use of psychedelic substances. Will religion itself become more democratic? He has taught the course Psychedelic Mindview for 25 years, and has published extensively. His new book, Psychedelic Horizons: Snow White, Immune System, Multistate Education, Reasking Education,will be published by Exeter next year.
Louis Silverstein will move the topic "from visionary experience to spiritual life." He will invite discussion of how "the disciplined and responsible use of plants and chemicals can work toward the betterment of the human journey." Pointing out that "visionary experience in not the same as spiritual life," he will seek to guide the discussion toward "how to incorporate such experiences into a spiritual life." Silverstein is Professor of Liberal Studies at Columbia College Chicago and has published widely. His recent book, Deep Spirit & Great Heart: Living in the Marijuana Consciousness continues his lifelong interest in the effects of psychoactive drugs on personal and cultural psychology and experience.
From Visionary Experience to Spiritual Life: Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals is part of the adult education series, Intersections: A Meeting Place for Diverse Ideas on Contemporary Culture and the Arts. Intersections, which is a collaboration between the Cultural Studies Program of Columbia College Chicago and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, presents monthly lectures and discussions that investigate and celebrate the complexity of contemporary culture and the arts in which scholars and educators from Columbia College Chicago explore a broad range of compelling topics in a format designed to be informative, invigorating and accessible. The third presentation of this season, The Simpsons: Cultural Criticism and America's Favorite TV Family, will take place on Wednesday, December 7. All Intersections events are held in the First Floor West Meeting Room of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. Admission is free.
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