Programme

The programme is subject to change.

Saturday 16 November 2013

9.30 registration

10.15 welcome – Katy Price

10.30 to 12 – Higher & Heightened Selves
(Chair – Katy Price)

• Vincent Barras & Fernando Vidal – Art and the “subconscious”: Waldemar Deonna on Hélène Smith
• Jennie Chapman – Fiction that tells the Truth: Reading Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come through Near Death Experience Narratives of the 1970s
• Stephen Clark – Colin Wilson and the Mind Parasites

12.00 to 1.30pm LUNCH

1.30 to 3.30pm – parallel sessions A & B

A: Huxley & Burroughs
(Chair – Jeffrey Kripal)

• Rob Dickins – Psychedelics – a Literary Science
• Alex Pavey – The Doors of Perception as Bergsonian mysticism
• Jake Poller – Walking Towards the Light: Séances, Spiritualism and Psychical Research in the Work of Aldous Huxley

B: Surrealism & Mysticism
(Chair – Jennie Chapman)

• Gavin Parkinson – Everyday Magic in the 1950s: Surrealism and Parapsychology
• Yiyi Lopez Gandara – Mysticism, Irrationality and Desire in David Gascoyne’s Lesser-Known Surrealist Texts
• Jamie Callison – Psychical Training: Interwar Theorists of Mysticism and Popular Literature
• Leslie de Bont – “A dubious Borderland”: May Sinclair’s fictional and theoretical discourses on mystical experiences

3.30-4pm – coffee

4-5.15pm – parallel sessions C & D

C: Shamanism and Healing
(Chair – Bronac Ferran)

• Zoe Bran – The Return of the Shaman: Michael Harner and Spiritual Democracy
• John-Francis Kinsler – Kim Tong-ni’s “Picture of a Shaman Sorceress”: National Identity in Flux

D: Vision and Bodywork
(Chair – Sarah Crook)

• Sophie Jones – “Closed-Eye Vision” and Pregnant Embodiment in 1960s US Cinema
• Tanojiri Tetsuro – “Tenshin” concept and Noguchi-Seitai: The Birth of Thought of Japanese Alternative Healing Movement

5.15-6.45 – keynote
Jeffrey Kripal
(Chair – Jake Poller)

The Perfect Insect of the Imaginal: Frederic Myers and the Evolution of the Human Imagination

6.45 – reception

8pm – dinner at local restaurant (15 mins walk along the Canal – at the Thai Rooms)

Sunday 17 November 2013

10-11am – Abduction & Control
(Chair – Rhodri Hayward)

• Mark Pilkington – Abductee Zero
• Mike Jay – Over the Edge: William Sargant and the Battle for the Mind

11 to 11.30 Coffee

11.30 to 12.30 – parallel sessions E & F

E: Drinking
(Chair – Erin Horokova)

• Steven Earnshaw – “Damned Voice in my Head”: Jean Rhys and Alcoholic Consciousness
• Matthew Warner Osborn – Alcoholics and Pink Elephants: Delerium Tremens in Twentieth-Century Medicine and Culture

F: ESP
(Chair – Fernando Vidal)

• Ingrid Kloosterman – The Margins of Ganzfeld
• David Luke – Psychedelic ESP research, 1918-1980

12.30 to 2pm – lunch

2-3.15pm – keynote:
Christina Harrington
(Chair – David Luke)

States of Consciousness and the Rise of Modern Pagan Witchcraft: A look at the Twentieth Century

3.15pm closing remarks

3.30 END