Anthropology Colloquium is the department’s speaker series that invites a mixture of anthropologists from within and outside of UBC to present their research. This speaker series is scheduled throughout the academic year, typically with a lunch reception in the AnSo Lounge.
The Absorption Hypothesis: How People Learn to Hear God and Experience Spirituality
Thursday March 17, 2016
Michael Ames Theatre, Museum of Anthropology
11:30 – 1:00 pm
Event Poster:PDF
Dr. Tanya Luhrmann
Tanya Luhrmann is Watkins University Professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department.
Abstract
What kind of skill? Both my ethnographic work and my psychological work have consistently found that “absorption” is associated with experiences of God, both in America and abroad. People who score highly on the absorption scale are more likely to say that they experience God as a person; that they have a back and forth dialogue with God; that that they have vivid sensory encounters with God (they hear his voice with their ears); and that they have a range of other powerful and unusual spiritual experiences. So what exactly IS absorption and how are spirituality and imagination related?
Bio
Tanya Luhrmann is Watkins University Professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department. Her work focuses on the way that objects without material presence become real to people. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and received a John Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2007.
Co-sponsored by Green College and the Vancouver Institute
