Dear friends of AURA,

Following hot on the heels of a successful seminar last week, we would like to announce the second instalment of “Slow Seminar: Reading More-Than-Human Worlds.”

The details are as follows:

Thursday November 21, 3.00-5.00 pm 

Nobelparken (Jens Chr- Schous Vej 3), Building 1451, Room 515.

We welcome old friends and fresh faces alike. As usual, there will be coffee, cake, and a bit of fruit - courtesy of the Anthropology Research Program

For this seminar, we will read Cesar Giraldo Herrera’s book Microbes and other Shamanic Beings (Palgrave 2018). While shamanism is commonly understood through reference to spirits and souls, this innovative and evocative book examines shamanic notions and practices through ideas that started developing in the West after encountering Amerindian shamans in order to develop three major arguments: First, since their earliest accounts Amerindian shamanic notions have had more in common with current microbial ecology than with Christian religious beliefs. Second, the human senses allow the unaided perception of the microbial world. Lastly, the theory that some diseases are produced by living agents acquired through contagion was proposed right after Contact in relation to syphilis, an important subject of pre-Contact Amerindian medicine and mythology. The book will appeal to anyone curious about shamanism and willing to take it seriously and to those enquiring about the microbiome, our relations with microbes, and the long history behind them.

The book is freely available as an e-book through the AU Library.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Michael (Vine), Pierre (du Pleissis), and Nils (Bubandt)