Psychedemia is an academic conference hosted at the University of Pennsylvania from September 27-30, 2012. This conference will feature university scholars and researchers from across the country in the fields of medicine, psychology, neuroscience, ethics, rhetoric, and anthropology to discuss recent ideas and discoveries in psychedelic studies. Researchers will be brought together with clinicians and professionals in interdisciplinary symposia that will explore an array of culturally-pertinent subjects. We will question modern conceptions of health by exploring connections between our indigenous history with psychedelic medicine and the most recent medical and anthropological discoveries in alleviating symptoms of cancer, drug dependence, and depression with psilocybin and ayahuasca. We will explore how altered states of consciousness can be used as tools to learn more about the human mind, and we will discuss how these states affect well-being, creativity, social interaction, conceptions of culture, and artistic vision. We will discuss the current obstacles to performing such exploratory research with university researchers and drug policy advocates, and we will also discuss the ethics and social history of utilizing psychedelics as tools. Throughout the conference, we will learn about current inroads in academia and art that are promoting the idea that psychedelics can be explored rationally, responsibly, and to the benefit of humankind.
Together, this conference is poised to explore varied perspectives of a significant issue: as the psychedelic become more visible in media outlets such as the New York Times, Time Magazine, and Scientific American, it is vital to consider the impact of altered states of consciousness, and the means by which they are produced, from interdisciplinary and critical perspectives.
