Historians on Drugs: Toward an Empirical Historiography of Global Psychedelic Cultures

Description
Across time and space, human communities have used mind-altering drugs to explore deeper levels of consciousness, access visionary states of awareness, and to heal disease. In this lecture, I will survey the global history of psychedelics, tracing their journey from ancient ceremonial use to modern science and culture. We’ll explore how substances such as peyote, ayahuasca, and “magic mushrooms” have been embedded in spiritual and healing traditions, rites of passage, sorcery, religious rituals, and divination, not to mention their more recent application in psychiatry, new religious movements, and technological innovations. Special attention will focus on the ways in which scholars have long misinterpreted the evidence for humanity’s ancient love affair with powerful psychoactives, and the way in which a new generation of researchers have unearthed evidence that overturns everything we thought we knew about humanity’s irrepressible appetite for consciousness alteration. Blending history, anthropology, religious studies, and archeology, this lecture invites audiences to see psychedelics not as fringe curiosities, but as enduring companions in humanity’s long search for insight, connection, and wonder.

About the speaker
J. Christian Greer, PhD, is a scholar of Religious Studies with a special focus on psychedelic cultures across space and time. He has held teaching positions at Harvard University, Yale University, and is currently a full-time lecturer at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He is the co-founder, and the co-chair of the Drugs and Religion program unit at the American Academy of Religion, and each June, he leads “The Psychedelic Universe: Global Perspectives on Higher Consciousness,” an intensive, 2-week seminar on the global history of psychedelics, hosted on-location at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.  His forthcoming book, Crimes Against Normality: Psychedelic Militancy in the Fanzine Revolution (Oxford University Press), explores the expansion and diversification of psychedelic networks in the underground cultures of the 1980s.

Location
University of Amsterdam, Roeterseiland Campus. Room number will be shared to those who have registered.

Registration
This talk is free, but registration is required. Use the booking form below to register.