Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness

AC 2021 Section Meeting: Sea Change: Consciousness, Lifeworlds & Ecological Upheaval
2021-03-12 08:00 - 2021-03-14 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | NV
Sea Change: Lifeworlds & Ecological Upheaval
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness
39TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
March 12th – 14th, 2021 (Online)
“How do people imagine the landscapes they find themselves in? How does the land shape the imagination of the people who dwell in it? How does desire itself, the desire to comprehend, shape knowledge?”
–Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
The Society of the Anthropology of Consciousness invites you to join us online over three days to investigate how we engage with communities around ongoing concerns of ecological change. The title “Sea Change” points to the context and social climate in which we currently live: a time in which drastic social, political, and environmental change is occurring. During these times of chaos and ecological upheaval, conflict and despair inevitably arise as responses to the ongoing precarity and uncertainty. As anthropologists and consciousness researchers, there are many ways to interpret and understand these changes. “Sea Change” also acknowledges that we live in a time in which all forms of life are experiencing radical changes on the planet (such as rising sea levels), and with such changes, suffering and conflict increases. Therefore, we invite presenters and attendees to reflect and engage with subjects related to change, embodied transformation, and ecological disruption.
We consider this conference an opportunity to build networks for collective engagement, restorative practices, healing, and reconciliation. We will be highlighting projects which explore indigenous and/or plant-based practices that might provide transformational learning and opportunities for collective action. It is our goal to elevate oppressed voices and wisdom that honor those communities and challenge the power dynamics of colonization. We also welcome members, collaborators, and those new to the conference to engage in discussions related to exploring consciousness in all lived experiences, both human and non-human consciousness.
Join us over the weekend of March 12-14, 2021 to explore these issues through live streamed Zoom sessions with academics, activists, and specialists; a pre-recorded asynchronous media gallery with a curated selection of podcasts, short films, and other media; and some interactive workshops and meditation sessions to help facilitate mind/body learning and individual and communal transformations. Stop by for the afterparty each night on our Zoom Happy Hours and Twitch sessions if you dare! Registration information below.
Instructions
Please go to the following link and follow the registration instructions there:
https://secure.americananthro.org/eWeb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=AAAWeb&WebKey=e63ef3e6-a61c-4508-9b61-084b2ac9bb98&RegPath=EventRegFees&REg_evt_key=a7232bf8-7fed-48b1-b0a5-29bc4838436e
(NOTE: You will be asked to create a username and password for the AAA system, if you do not already have one, before you can register. No payment is required to do this. You do not need to be a member of the AAA to attend this conference.)
Please send an email to conferencesac@gmail.com to be considered for a free registration grant. If selected, we will send you a unique code to enter when registering that will zero your payment for the entire conference. Please do not share this link with anyone as it will only work for the individual we have given it to.
Participants will receive further information and secure links to the online conference once registered. In order to be officially registered, all attendees will need to create a user account and register on the AAA website: (http://www.americananthro.org), after which they can select their registration type and check out. You will them get an email with access to the Communities page with all up to date announcements, links, and the conference program.
For more information, please contact:
conferencesac@gmail.com
or
Mark Flanagan, Program Chair — markwflanagan1@gmail.com
Andy Gurevich, President — agingprophet@gmail.com

AOC 2021 Conference Program
2021-03-12 09:00 - 2021-03-14 21:00 (America/New_York) | NV
PLEASE NOTE: ALL TIMES ARE EASTERN STANDARD TIME. AND ALSO, WE HAVE A DAYLIGHT SAVINGS EVENT ON SATURDAY EVENING.
Hello everyone,
Please download the full conference program here. Any last minute changes will be made on the conference Communities page itself. This program will inform you as to the times and content of each session, as well as other goings on with the conference and the organization itself. Presenters will be sent special Zoom links for their specific sessions directly by email, and attendees will join sessions through the links posted in the Communities page the day of each session. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THESE LINKS WITH ANYONE so we can keep the conference safe and secure.
AoC 2021 Conference Program
Registration Instructions
Please go to the following link and follow the registration instructions there:
https://secure.americananthro.org/eWeb/DynamicPage.aspx?Site=AAAWeb&WebKey=e63ef3e6-a61c-4508-9b61-084b2ac9bb98&RegPath=EventRegFees&REg_evt_key=a7232bf8-7fed-48b1-b0a5-29bc4838436e
(NOTE: You will be asked to create a username and password for the AAA system, if you do not already have one, before you can register. No payment is required to do this. You do not need to be a member of the AAA to attend this conference.)
Participants will receive further information and secure links to the online conference once registered. In order to be officially registered, all attendees will need to create a user account and register on the AAA website: (http://www.americananthro.org), after which they can select their registration type and check out. You will them get an email with access to the Communities page with all up to date announcements, links, and the conference program.
Please send an email to conferencesac@gmail.com to be considered for a free registration grant. If selected, we will send you a unique code to enter when registering that will zero your payment for the entire conference. Please do not share this link with anyone as it will only work for the individual we have given it to.
Please also direct any questions to:
conferencesac@gmail.com
——————————
Andrew Gurevich,
He/Him/His
President, Anthropology of Consciousness
Professor of Literature, Mythology, & World Religion
Mt. Hood Community College
Portland OR
https://sac.americananthro.org
https://www.jcf.org/people/andrew-gurevich/

Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Approaches to Healing Trauma – Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy
2021-03-27 10:00 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | NV
“Two-eyed seeing” is a concept that was originated by Elder Albert Marshall of Sydney, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton University to give indigenous epistemology and knowledge equal status with mainstream scientific perspectives and knowledge. In M’iqmaq, the word is Etuaptmunk. In English, it means the idea of explanatory pluralism. Within most indigenous cultures, the mind is not considered separately from body, community, and spirituality, unlike the silos created in the dominant culture.
Healing must involve the body, the community, and the spirits. In this lecture, we are going to introduce the two-eyed seeing concept to explore how to work with trauma from both an indigenous perspective and contemporary neuroscience and psychological research. We are especially interested in the role that trauma plays in addictions and in the so-called “severe mental illnesses,” and how our approach to people in distress must also be trauma-informed.
This introductory lecture is designed for practitioners who provide counselling in indigenous communities. It is also open to those providing counseling in other communities who want to see how indigenous practices could enrich their work, as well as to others who are just curious about Indigenous cultures and mental health.
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD is the author of “Coyote Medicine”, “Coyote Healing”, and “Coyote Wisdom”, focusing on what Native culture has to offer the modern world. He has also written “Narrative Medicine”; “Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry”; and his most recent book, with Barbara Mainguy, “Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story”. He graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He has been on the faculties of several medical schools, most recently as associate professor of family medicine at the University of New England.
Barbara Mainguy, LICSW studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Toronto and received her master’s degree in Creative Arts Psychotherapy at Concordia University in Montreal. She has co-written Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story with Lewis Mehl-Madrona. Currently, she is completing her MFA in documentary filmmaking at York University, Toronto, and working with Lewis in Orono, Maine. She is the Director of Education for the Coyote Institute in Orono.

Violence, Trauma And The Making Of Racial Identity – Dr. Sheldon George
2021-05-22 10:00 - 12:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | NV
The tone of collective discourse has rapidly degenerated, damaging the forms and rituals that give coherence to our lives, cultures and professional disciplines contributing to a sense of communal and global unrest. In these intimate Saturday morning seminars our desire is to nourish a spirit of reflection rather than repeating the sounds of panic and alarm, or pretend hopes. Stepping back from the present situation, we will reflect on the current moment through trans-disciplinary lenses including philosophy, theology, history, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and anthropology. Together we will seek new perspectives that may help us move into an open future.
In a historical moment when the news media has repeatedly displayed the wanton killing of black men and women, the connection between African American identity and trauma seems especially salient. This talk will work through Lacanian psychoanalytic notions of subjectivity to ground an understanding of African American identity as mediated by social trauma. It will address, in particular, the 2012 Florida shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn, a white male whose excessive response to the loud rap music played by Davis and his friends demonstrates a Lacanian understanding of jouissance, or the other’s mode of enjoyment, as a root-source of notions of racial alterity. Moving through a series of Lacanian concepts relevant to race and racism (from hainamoration, to aggressivity, invidia and Atè), the talk will discuss how this jouissance, bound to fantasies of race, often structures both racism and racial identity around acts of violence and trauma, inducing African Americans to embrace willfully the very racial identities against which this violence is directed.

Sheldon George is Professor of English and Chair of the English department at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. His scholarship centers most directly on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and applies cultural and literary theory to analyses of American and African-American literature and culture. He is author of Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity and co-editor, with Jean Wyatt, of Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers: Race, Ethics, Narrative Form. He is currently completing a collection, co-edited with Derek Hook for Routledge press, that is titled Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalytic Theory.
Continuing education credits will be provided.
2 CEU hours provided for Licensed Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, and Social Workers
CEU Learning Objectives (2 CEUs offered – including ethics):

To increase critical thinking skills in order to apply interdisciplinary knowledge into clinical work and practice.
To increase understanding of the dynamics of historical foundations behind racialized thinking and current forms of political violence.
To better understand how we as clinicians can identify how race and racism may serve as tools that produce psychic pleasure for clients and how that function relates to contemporary manifestations of discontent, social suffering, and ethical dilemmas.

For more information and registration, please visit:
Violence, Trauma and the Making of Racial Identity – Dr. Sheldon George

The Mythology and Depth Psychology of Octavia Butler – Dr. Ayana Jamieson
2021-10-02 10:00 - 12:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom, United States
The tone of collective discourse has rapidly degenerated, damaging the forms and rituals that give coherence to our lives, cultures and professional disciplines contributing to a sense of communal and global unrest. In this intimate Saturday morning seminar, our desire is to nourish a spirit of reflection rather than repeating the sounds of panic and alarm or pretend hopes. Stepping back from the present situation, we will reflect on the current moment through trans-disciplinary lenses including philosophy, theology, history, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and anthropology. Together we will seek new perspectives that may help us move into an open future.
While award-winning speculative and science fiction author, Octavia E. Butler, passed away nearly fifteen years ago, 2020 has been a big year in her career. Her novel Parable of the Sower, written in 1993, just hit the New York Times Best Seller’s list for the first time in September 2020, while Ava Duverney, Viola Davis, and others continue to work to bring her works to the small screen, adapting her novels Dawn, Wild Seed and Kindred for television. Over the last several decades, Butler’s prescience in Parable of the Sower has not gone unnoticed. Set in the 2020s in Los Angeles, this novel references a nation beset by climate change, widespread illness, economic collapse, scarcity of necessities, and yes, a zealot politician running on the platform to “Make America Great Again.”
In this session with Depth Psychologist and founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, Ayana Jamieson, we’ll explore the mythology and meaning of Octavia E. Butler’s empathetic and remarkable science fiction. In addition to her role as founder of the Legacy Network, Ayana is also an expert on Butler’s life and work, the Butler archives at the Butler’s life and work serve as a case study for moving toward psychological wholeness, surviving trauma and developing resilient narratives in unprecedented times.
Saturday, October 2, 2021, from 10:00 AM to 12:15 PM Pacific time– via Zoom

AAC Business Meeting
2021-11-13 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Vancouver) | NV
Location: Virtual Zoom (look for the Zoom link in the AAA Communities Section on Friday, November 12th)
Time: 1:00-2:00 pm, Pacific/4:00-5:00 Eastern
Join us for an informal, Happy Hour style business meeting. Topics will include:

Year-in-Review
Truth and Responsibility within the context of our section interests
Board Recruitment – we need your perspectives and participation!
Fundraising for Student Prizes
Student Needs – Students – bring your ideas and wish lists!

Reflections on How We Think About, Classify, and Treat Disorders of Consciousness and Awareness
2021-11-17 13:30 - 15:15 (America/Vancouver) | NV
Oral Presentation (Baltimore, In-Person)
Time: 1:30-3:15 Pacific/4:30 PM – 6:15 PM Eastern
Presenters: Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Barbara Mainguy, Patrick McFarlane, and Albert Marshall

Distinguished Lecture: Sacred Wisdom: The Path to Hope, Balance, and Resilience Dr. Tommy K. Begay
2021-11-19 20:00 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | NV
Friday, November 19, 2021: 8:00 PM – 9:30 PM Eastern
Room: Virtual Room 1
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness invite you to attend our Distinguished Lecturer Event.
Many thanks to the Association for Indigenous Anthropologists and The Society for Psychological Anthropology for co-sponsoring this event.
As a result of the impact of historical trauma and other cultural- historical forces, Indigenous people of North America are more susceptible to a constellation of psychosocial, behavioral, and physiological risk factors that have contributed, in contemporary times, to a higher rate of morbidity across psychological, cardiometabolic, and functional domains. Prior to these traumatic episodes, Indigenous people were guided by a worldview grounded in a sacred epistemology of ritual and spiritual practices that defined inner identity with a Sacred Wisdom that provided a sense of wholeness, balance, harmony, hope, positive health, and healing.
This presentation will focus on the utilization of Sacred Wisdom as a psychology to promote general wellness and resilience. It is founded upon an understanding of the Diné (Navajo) epistemology of Sa’ah Naaghai Bik’eh Hozhoon, the pathway to a life of Hózhó, the Diné sense of internal beauty, harmony, and balance with the natural and social environments. The Beauty Way and Protection Way form the core for this balanced life and universal harmony. From this perspective, all parts of the Earth are powerfully charged and alive, as the Holy Wind provides the life force for all elements. Disease and dysfunction grow from an imbalance of universal harmony. As we gradually move out of a global pandemic and look to face the challenges of climate change, Sacred Wisdom provides a guide for a future full of hope, balance, and resilience.
About our Guest: Dr. Tommy K. Begay is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Arizona.
Event Organizer: Dr. Christina Callicott: christina.callicott@gmail.com
Register for the AAA Annual Meeting at their website.

Singing, Dreaming and Resistance Among the Water Guardians of Cajamarca, Peru with Chris Santiago, Board Member
2022-05-06 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States
Singing, Dreaming and Resistance Among the Water Guardians of Cajamarca, Peru,” with Chris Santiago, Board Member.
Registration is required.
Registration closes on the Thursday before the event at 5:00 Pacific Time.
Please register for these events at aocgeneral@gmail.com
This video presentation is based on Santiago’s fieldwork with the peasants of Cajamarca (2012-2014) and their struggle against the Conga gold mining mega-project. The presentation focuses on dreaming and singing as native arts of resistance that proved crucial in the fight for water and life, specifically the dreams and songs of Señora Máxima Acuña Atalaya de Chaupe and Señora Santos, and reflects on the power of cultural resistance.
Christopher Santiago (PhD, Columbia University, 2017);
Positions Held: Substitute Lecturer (2019-2020) College of Staten Island (CUNY); Adjunct Professor (2018-2019 & 2020-2021) College of Staten Island; Adjunct Professor (2018) New York City College of Technology (CUNY); Adjunct Professor (2016) York College (CUNY); Interests and/or Activities: phantasm, social & environmental justice, participated in Q&A for the film “Máxima” with director Claudia Sparrow at NYU (2020); Significant Publications: “Hystorize from the Self: D.H. Lawrence and ‘The Lovely Lady’”, The Psychoanalytic Review, 2019. “Twilight States: Comparing Case Studies of Hysteria and Spirit Possession”, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021. “Blood Magic In The Age of Psychopathy, Mass Shootings and Ecological Catastrophe”, C. Santiago and M. Melmed, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2022.
Based on years of fieldwork in Cajamarca, Peru, my research focuses on the theory and practice of cultural resistance in the form of dreams, songs, stories, and jokes which I call the shamanic aspects of the struggle against industrial extraction. The campesinos of Cajamarca say the lagoons and mountains lead the fight. Facing the death of the Earth, the resurgence of Pacha Mama consciousness in South America is a contemporary manifestation of Andean messianism. In our age of global meltdown, what is the ‘dreamweapon’ that would allow the voices of nature to speak once again? What is the potential of cultural forms widely considered false, fictitious, and counter to truth? Critiquing Western rationality, I call for the reenchantment of inner and outer nature. I seek to reverse the historical trauma that dissociates us from our imaginations and our bodies through the realization that, as the premodern West knew, there is no thought without a phantasm. Abolishing the reactive idealism which separates phantasy and reality, I revalue experience as mythological revolt, in an eruption of spirits. How was magic separated from history? How has the imagination been dominated and domesticated? How does this give rise to different temporalities of hysteria?

Collaging Consciousness: Art as a Method to Encounter Heterogeneity and Ecological Consciousness with Melinda Kiefer
2022-06-03 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom, United States
Collaging Consciousness: Art as a Method to Encounter Heterogeneity and Ecological Consciousness,” with Melinda Kiefer
Talk description: Artist/Educator Melinda Kiefer discusses her studio practice which incorporates painting, sculpture, and collage of natural and recycled materials to challenge dominant cultural systems and offer radical possibilities of alternate consciousnesses such as ecological consciousness through art. By working with a variety of materials, Kiefer explores how experience is rooted in materiality rather than ideologically separated, an illusion which has been intensified by daily mediated experience. Kiefer also touches upon her practice as an arts educator to disband colonial systems of knowledge dominating the body and the imagination.
Registration is required.
Registration closes on the Thursday before the event at 5:00 Pacific Time.
Please register for these events at aocgeneral@gmail.com

Student Mentoring, Q&A
2022-08-05 12:00 - 13:30, 2022-11-04 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States
Students and folks on the job market, please bring your questions about school, writing, job application questions, and any other questions that you feel could help you prepare both professionally and academically.
Graduates and Faculty, please consider attending this event that supports future and young scholars.
Registration is required.
Registration closes on the Thursday before the event at 5:00 Pacific Time.
Please register for these events at aocgeneral@gmail.com

Mysticism, Dreaming and the “Psychedelic Revolution” with Katherine Lawson Shantzis, Editorial Board Member.
2022-10-07 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States
Mysticism, Dreaming and the “Psychedelic Revolution” with Katherine Lawson Shantzis, Editorial Board Member.
Registration is required.
Registration closes on the Thursday before the event at 5:00 Pacific Time.
Please register for these events at aocgeneral@gmail.com
Dr. Katherine Lawson support leaders, organizations, and innovators, guiding them to new levels of creativity, self-knowledge, fulfillment, and productivity. She combines Mind-Body Medicine research with a deep understanding of psychology, spirituality, and neuroscience to bring a more meaningful approach to life, work, and relationships. She gives audiences tools to utilize for their personal and professional growth and expansion.
Dr. Lawson has spoken at top innovative companies and universities such as UCSF and Google. Topics include healing, innovation, and well-being.
Dr. Lawson has a PhD in Mind-Body Medicine with a focus on Integrative Mental Health. She focuses on the interactions between the brain, mind, body, and personality, and the powerful ways in which mental, social, spiritual, and behavioral factors affect health and happiness. She obtained her MA in Counseling Psychotherapy with a focus in Depth Psychotherapy at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she published a thesis looking at the healing properties of dream work. She shares her personal journey with cancer as well as working with cancer patients and teaching the process of working with Embodied Imagination to cultivate creativity, growth and healing.
Dr. Lawson is a certified Embodied Imagination® practitioner, a consultant, and a speaker—both in the U.S. and internationally, as well as a devoted mother and wife.

Distinguished Lecture: Sacred Geography
2022-11-10 20:30 - 22:30 (America/New_York) | NV
Professor Wade Davis
BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk
Professor of Anthropology
University of British Columbia
This presentation celebrates a myriad of cultures that through ritual practice infuse life with a sense of the sacred, even as they honour reciprocal obligations that define their relationship to the natural world. These rituals may involve movement through mystic space, pilgrimages that involve separation from the social space, a passage through a liminal dimension, and a final reintegration to the community. They may feature metaphysical journeys to the divine, mediated by sacred plants, or encounters with objects in a landscape made holy through generations of desire, like old tools warm from decades of human touch. These include sacred mountains, venerated trees, holy waters, ritual caves, and healing springs, as well as places of deep memory where ancient art and human activity resonate with spiritual authority; what the Irish describe as the thin places, where heaven and earth come together to reveal glimpses of the divine. Movement through sacred geography, rites of passage, prayer, healing, mystical union, and devotion. The goal ultimately is to reveal what these traditions have to say to the world, and how they might contribute to what is so desperately needed today — an utterly new dream of the Earth.

Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness 40th Annual Conference
2023-04-27 08:00 - 2023-04-29 17:00 (America/New_York) | The Chrysalis Inn & Spa in Bellingham, WA, 804 10th St, Bellingham,, WA, 98225, United States
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness 40th Annual Conference
Death and Transformation
April 27-29, 2023
The Chrysalis Inn & Spa in Bellingham, WA
Proposal Submission: https://forms.gle/woQt4HR8ZecmrWvW6Conference Registration: https://my.americananthro.org/nc__event?id=a0l8W00000ZhMDQQA3
The Program Committee for the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness invites members and their collaborators to investigate how we engage with communities concerning death, dying, and transformation. We chose this theme to reflect upon the individual and collective experiences with death (in all its forms) and the experience of transformation. The theme of Death and Transformation points to the context and social climate in which we currently live: many of us – if not all of us – are seeing many of our lifeways and habits dissolve and metamorphosizing into forms that are unexpected, unanticipated, and difficult to ascertain. As anthropologists and consciousness researchers, we understand that we need to provide containers for each other so that we may be of support to each other during such a collective liminal time. Therefore, we invite presenters to reflect and engage with subjects related to death, dying, near-death experiences, death-care, ancestral healing, transformation, and ecological collapse. We consider this conference an opportunity to build networks for collective engagement, restorative practices, healing, and reconciliation.
We continue to welcome works that explore practices that might provide transformational learning and opportunities for collective action. We also welcome members, collaborators, and those new to the conference to engage in discussions related to exploring consciousness in all lived experiences, both human and non-human consciousness.
Potential topics for paper, panel proposals, pre-recorded events, short films, art, and workshops include but are not limited to:

Death and/or near-death experiences (NDEs)
Dreams and death
The deadly and/or transformative effects of COVID-19
Ecological collapse and/or transformation through wildfires and flooding
Voices of youth and subaltern amidst ecological disruption and change
“Slow” deaths through capitalist mechanisms such as worker exploitation
Death work and workers that support the dying in various ways
Explorations of what a ‘good death’ is
Grief processing
End-of-life processes and reflections
Ancestors and our relationships with those who have died
Funerary and burial practices

Workshops, Experientials, and Art
We also invite submissions of artistic works and experiential workshops exploring or cultivating consciousness, specifically those that relate to the conference theme. We aim to build bridges across scholastic and creative communities and provide opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Prerecorded Content Gallery
Do you have a short film, a podcast episode, a prerecorded panel discussion, or other academic or artistic work that you feel aligns with our conference theme? Will this pre-recorded media work as an integral part of our online gallery that will be live for the entire conference? Reach out and let us know. We can accommodate several different formats, and they need not be limited to academic projects or those with a decidedly anthropological lens. We are an interdisciplinary organization and are seeking content from a variety of different perspectives. The closer to the communities most affected by death in all its forms, including ecological upheaval, the better.
Registration Instructions

Proposals and questions regarding workshops, and special events should be submitted by April 3rd, 2023 to: aocgeneral@gmail.com, Acceptance notifications will be sent by April 10th.

To submit your proposal, please visit the online submission portal here: https://forms.gle/woQt4HR8ZecmrWvW6.

Meeting registration is required and must be completed by the submission deadline for your proposal(s) to be considered. To register before the April 3 submission deadline, please visit the AAA website here: https://my.americananthro.org/nc__event?id=a0l8W00000ZhMDQQA3.

If your submission is not accepted, you may request a refund of your registration fees.

For more information, please contact: John Baker, AC President: JohnBaker@vcccd.edu

About the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness:
The Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (AC), a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), is an interdisciplinary association of anthropologists, psychologists, mythologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and like-minded scholar-practitioners united by a common interest in the study of consciousness from an anthropological perspective. Learn more at https://sac.americananthro.org and join the association at https://www.americananthro.org.

SPECIAL EVENTS (list still updating) Friday, April 28:
Fairhaven Gore & Lore History Tour by the Good Time Girls
Start time: 8:00pm (Please plan to arrive 15 minutes before.)
Meeting location: Meet at the Fairhaven Village Green behind Village Books (1207 10th St, Bellingham, WA 98225.)
Explore the spooky side of Fairhaven, Bellingham’s south-side shopping district and “haunted hot-spot.” Hear ghost stories, true crime tales and spooky local lore with a costumed guide. This tour lasts a little over 1 hour and distance is under 1 mile. PG-13 suggested for violent, gory, and potentially scary topics.
TOURISM INFORMATION
Bellingham Tourism Information: https://www.bellingham.org
HOTEL INFORMATION
Host Hotel – Chrysalis Inn Hotel & Spa in Bellingham, WA: https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/blittqq-the-chrysalis-inn-and-spa-bellingham/
Other Accommodations: https://admissions.wwu.edu/visit/accommodations
TRAVEL INFORMATION
Bellingham International Airport (Recommended)

Bellingham Airport is about 11 miles from the host hotel.

Recommend Taxi, Uber, or Lyft to the hotel. If your flight is on a Sunday, very early in the morning, or late at night, we recommend reserving a ride to the airport in a taxi in advance.
Seattle Tacoma International Airport
Sea-Tac Airport can be reached from Bellingham using a variety of options:

Car Rental.
Airporter Shuttle provides direct service between Bellingham and Sea-Tac airport.

Public transit, Greyhound and Amtrak can be used with a transfer to Link Light Rail in Seattle. The Link light rail travels to Sea-Tac airport.

The Port of Seattle operates Sea-Tac Airport. Information regarding the airport can be found on their website, portseattle.org/Sea-Tac.

Bellair Charters / Airporter

The Bellair Airporter Shuttle provides service multiple times daily between Bellingham and SeaTac airport, plus many other destinations including eastern Washington.

The Airporter Shuttle can be boarded any day at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, 714 Lakeway Drive (next to Fred Meyer), with convenient connections to WWU via WTA bus, and Taxi/Uber/Lyft. Please note that due to the coronavirus pandemic the Airporter Shuttle is not stopping on campus. Typically, the Airporter picks up on the WWU Campus at the Performing Arts Center on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays with extended service on holidays and breaks.
FlixBus

FlixBus offers intercity bus connections to Vancouver BC, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, and more. Catch the FlixBus then travel to the hotel.

Amtrak Cascades Train

Amtrak Cascades provides daily service between Bellingham, Vancouver BC and points south to Eugene. The Amtrak Station is located at the Fairhaven Transportation Center, 401 Harris Avenue.

Greyhound Bus

Catch a Greyhound bus to travel down the I-5 corridor and to eastern Washington. The Greyhound bus station is located at the Fairhaven Transportation Center, 401 Harris Avenue, Bellingham, then travel to the hotel.

Washington State Ferries

Ferries provide service to/from multiple points around the Puget Sound, San Juan Islands, and Vancouver Island. wsdot.wa.gov/ferries

Please see our flyer for the conference below.
AAC 2023 Conference Program FINAL

Psychedelic Renaissance? What’s the Buzz? with Lisa Gezon
2023-05-05 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States
Join Professor Lisa Gezon (University of Alabama, Birmingham) on a conversation about shifting conversations about psychedelics and their uses in contemporary contexts for self-actualization, mental health therapy, and other forms of ritual and healing. How do experiences vary based on demographics and geography? Are experiences of traditionally marginalized populations different in any noteworthy ways? What do anthropologists have to contribute to that interdisciplinary conversation? Gezon will begin with an overview of her current research on psychedelic integration groups. This topic is a preview of conversations we hope to continue at the AAA in November.

The Consciousness Program at Goddard College with Hillary Webb
2023-09-08 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States
(Second Friday due to Labor Day weekend)

Psychedelic Research Through the Lens of Ritual Initiation with Reed A. Morrison
2023-10-06 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States

The Evolved Psychology of Psychedelic Set and Setting: Inferences Regarding the Roles of Shamanism and Entheogenic Ecopsychology with Michael James Winkelman
2023-11-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | NV

Tarantismo in Italy with Maria Teresa Fiumerodo
2023-12-01 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom, United States

Teaching Consciousness at Goddard College with Hillary Webb
2024-01-12 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | NV

Spring 2024 Annual Meeting
2024-04-06 09:00 - 2024-04-10 17:00 (America/New_York) | Embassy Suites by Hilton St. Louis ~ St. Charles Hotel, Two Convention Center Plaza,, St. Charles, MO, 63303, United States
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness 41st Annual ConferenceEmbassy Suites by Hilton St. Louis ~ St. Charles HotelTwo Convention Center Plaza, St. Charles, MO 63303
The Program Committee for the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness invites members and their collaborators to investigate how we engage with themes of darkness and/or light. Our theme and meeting dates were chosen to coincide with the total solar eclipse, which will come to North America on April 8, 2024. According to space.com, “A total solar eclipse happens when the moon appears the same size in the sky as the sun, or slightly larger, so fully covers the disk of the sun, giving observers a view of the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona” (https://www.space.com/41552-total-solar-eclipse-2024-guide.html). This event provides opportunities for making connections between consciousness and experiences of lightness and darkness in an array of forms, from literal to metaphorical. It invites us to consider how light and dark may be conceived as binary and yet include nuances such as crepuscular shadows and normally invisible coronal elements. Contributors are invited to draw on a wide range of topics, including, for example, lived experiences of ritual and other collective awakenings, oppression or privilege, (in/ex)clusivity, and healing. We also consider this conference an opportunity to build networks for collective engagement, restorative practices, healing, and reconciliation.

NOTE: We also accept papers that do not directly fit the theme.
We welcome works that explore indigenous and/or plant-based practices that might provide transformational learning and opportunities for collective action. We also welcome members, collaborators, and those new to the conference to engage in discussions related to exploring consciousness in all lived experiences, both human and non-human consciousness. We are also interested in hearing voices representing BIPoC, post-colonial, and other marginalized perspectives (such as those based on gender, sexuality, class, ability, age, etc.)

Click here to See the full 2024 Annual Meeting Call for Papers.

Adding Enhanced Participation to Decipher Huichol Ritual and Shamanic Initiation by Jay Courtney Fikes, PhD
2024-11-01 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom, United States
Dr. Fikes has provided the following summary of his presentation:
Reading Carlos Castaneda’s first four books played a significant part in my decision to begin fieldwork in 1976 among the Huichol (Wixarika) living near the ceremonial center of Santa Catarina. See map on my website, http://jayfikes.com/spanish-sobre-el-autor. Dr. Castaneda’s alleged apprenticeship (as described in his first two books) featured three entheogenic plants. One of them, peyote, was collected annually by Huichol temple officers; who walked eleven days to enter Wirikuta, the sacred land where the Sun Father was born, in order to hunt peyote as (if it were) a deer. To understand the meaning and functions of rituals embedded in the Huichol annual ritual cycle I took Castaneda’s advice. Thus eating peyote during their rituals and while visiting sacred sites, became vital to my research. This strategy of “enhanced participation,” led me to complete a pilgrimage in 1986 to a female Kieri, a powerful entheogenic plant in the Solandra genus. Although Kieri has long been defamed as evil by anthropologists who relied solely on hearsay, Note 1, by doing an all night pilgrimage–making offerings and prayers to a divine Kieri – combined with translating the narrative explaining Kieri’s role in creating the first Deer Shaman (Fikes 2021) I learned that Huichol veneration of Kieri preceded collecting peyote–by temple officers making annual peyote pilgrimages which enabled the inhabitants of Santa Catarina to ingest it during their Peyote Dance at the end of each dry season.
After doing 34 years of research with four Huichol shamans, in 2011 Unknown Huichol: Shamans and Immortals, Allies against Chaos, was published. In 2021 I published Beyond Peyote: Kieri and the Huichol Deer Shaman, which is the focus for our Friday seminar.

Exploring the Modern Druid Tradition: Sacred Creativity, Awen, and Nature Connection
2024-12-06 13:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom, United States
Dr. Dana Driscoll, Indiana University of Pennsylvania USA; Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America/ This presentation will offer an exploration of creative practices and the “Awen”; in the modern druid tradition, a tradition of nature spirituality inspired by the Ancient Druids and revitalized in the 17th century. Dana will briefly share details about the druid tradition as a whole: rituals, beliefs, the ways in which druids understand consciousness and metaphysics. Then, Dana will offer an exploration into how druids understand the sacred concept of “Awen”, which is defined as flowing inspiration, flow states, and divine creative expression as well as the broader force of
divine creation. While this concept has been studied primarily in the field of psychology as a “Flow state”, Dana will share how druids understand the Awen to be many things: an altered state of consciousness, a spark of insight, a spiritual practice, and something that needs to be carefully cultivated. As both an insider and a social scientist, Dana has a unique perspective on the druid tradition. She will share from her own experiences as well from her studies in the druid tradition (including a large study of 266 druids) and more broadly on her ongoing research on flow states (of non-druids).

Annual Spring Meeting: Las Vegas 2025
2025-05-01 - 2025-05-03 | Palazzo, Las Vegas, NV, 3325 S Las Vegas Blvd,, Las Vegas, NV, 89109, United States
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness
42nd Annual Conference
May 1-3, 2025

(There may be an informal event on the evening of April 3oth,
and a closing session on the morning of May 4th)

Las Vegas, NV at the Palazzo

I am a great admirer of mystery and magic. Look at this life – all mystery and magic.
Harry Houdini
Don’t we all love a little magic and mystery? Ancient mystery schools taught ways of navigating the universe, connecting with the divine, and gaining wisdom. Magic was a method of interacting with the supernatural and to influence desired outcomes. Yet, even as science has changed our understanding of the world and our place in it, people still seek out the mystical. Many seek out spiritual experiences, delight in being fooled by illusionists, attend role-playing mysteries, and hope their Hogwarts letter will arrive. For the upcoming conference we invite members to explore how and why mystery and magic are so enchanting to us. While there have been many anthropological studies of magic in the past, there are still many meaningful ways in which we can look at how magic and mystery impact humanity. We are looking for topics from personal experiences of magic, magic as control, connection, self-actualization, even to the mystery of consciousness itself.
NOTE: We also accept papers that do not directly fit the theme.
We welcome works that explore indigenous and/or plant-based practices that might provide transformational learning and opportunities for collective action. We also welcome members, collaborators, and those new to the conference to engage in discussions related to exploring consciousness in all lived experiences, both human and non-human consciousness. We are also interested in hearing voices representing BIPoC, post-colonial, and other marginalized perspectives (such as those based on gender, sexuality, class, ability, age, etc.)
Potential paper, panel proposals, pre-recorded events, short films, and workshops include but are not limited to the mysteries of:

· Ritual, symbolism and/or healing
· Collective or individual awakenings
· The play of Jungian archetypes and shadows
· (In/ex)clusivity
· Identity and coming out
· Wild, unfettered capitalism
· Transformation and change
· Barriers and openings
· Play and testing boundaries
· Shadow economies and politics
· Archaeological or other revelations
· Linguistic practices including gossip, slander, praise, and labelling.
· (In)visible biological realms, both human and non-human, either flora or fauna
· Mysterious concepts of magic
· Artistic expressions representing mystery and magic

Workshops, Experientials, and Art
We also invite submissions of artistic works and experiential workshops exploring or cultivating consciousness, specifically those that relate to the conference theme. We aim to build bridges across scholastic and creative communities and provide opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Prerecorded Content Gallery
Do you have a short film, a podcast episode, a prerecorded panel discussion, or other academic or artistic work that you feel aligns with our conference theme? Reach out and let us know. We are an interdisciplinary organization and are seeking content from a variety of different perspectives to share with our members.
Registration & Submission Instructions
You may register for the meeting and submit proposals by locating the announcement of the meeting in the “Upcoming Events” or “Section Meeting” areas of the AAA Community Hub. Or, if you are into long URLs, at:
The deadline for submissions will be March 31, 2025 @ 8:00 PM Eastern Time
Acceptance notifications will be sent April 15, 2025.
If your submission is not accepted, you may request a refund of your registration fees.
For more information, please contact:
John Baker at johnbaker@vcccd.edu or Stephanie Fox at xbonesgirl@gmail.co
