Trance Conference Quotes and Highlights

The CUNY Graduate Center English Student Association sponsored a conference on “Trance”. I gave a talk titled “Patterns of Trance Across the Tree of Life”, thinking about the biological underpinnings of trance and how these operate across the tree of life.

Word of the day: apotropaic

Runner up: Propitiate

Other talks that resonated with me

• LeiLani D. Dowell (English, CUNY Graduate Center), “The Hypnotic Effects of ‘Homophobia’”
• Seth Auster-Rosen (Asian Religions, Yale Divinity School), “Narasimha: Masking and Possession on the Cosmic Stage”
• Alexis Larsson (English, CUNY Graduate Center), “Filmic Trance in the Environmental Baroque”
• Gwendolyn Shaw (Art History, CUNY Graduate Center), “Vodou Iconography in the Work of Maya Deren”

Good quotes

• “For the moment, what we attend to is reality”
• “Art and creativity are communal acts”
• “Whats the other side of the conversation with nature?”
• “Beyond the magic”
• “If it’s not the imagination it’s not working”