Stanford anthropologist to talk ‘Minds, Madness and Mystical Things’

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Tanya Luhrmann from the Stanford University Department of Anthropology will present the public talk “Minds, Madness and Mystical Things” at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, in the Cone University Center, Room 112.

As Stanford’s Watkins University Professor, Luhrmann researches the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She has done ethnography on the streets of Chicago with homeless and psychotic women and worked with people who hear voices in Chennai, Accra and the South Bay.

In her April 4 talk, Luhrmann will focus on what people think about their minds matters and may shape mental events. She will make the case that people find evidence of God’s presence in mental events; that different practices of attending to mental events have identifiable consequences; and that different cultures and different theologies emphasize mind and mental processes in distinctive ways.