Sundays, February 5, 12, 19, 26, March 5, 2023
3 pm - 4:30 pm ET (NYC time)
Admission: $140 (Patreon members) / $160 (Regular admission)

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Join author, illustrator, musician, and Professor Stephen Asma for an exploration of the imagination. Asma is an internationally renowned scholar and practitioner of the imagination.

Imagination is intrinsic to our inner lives. You could even say that it makes up a ‘second universe’ inside our heads. We invent animals and events that don’t exist, we rerun history with alternative outcomes, we envision social and moral utopias, we revel in fantasy art, and we meditate both on what we could have been and on what we might become. Imagination is the possibility maker. It’s the home of hope and regret.

Animators such as Hayao Miyazaki, Walt Disney and the makers of Pixar Studios are masterful at imagination, but they’re only creating a public version of our everyday private lives. If you could see the fantastic mash-up inside the mind of the average five-year-old, then Star Wars and Harry Potter would seem sober and dull. So, why is there so little analysis of imagination, by philosophers, psychologists, scientists, and even artists?

In this course Stephen Asma will follow up on Charles Darwin’s claim that “the Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results … Dreaming gives us the best notion of this power…the dream is an involuntary art of poetry.”

Over the course of five weeks, we will learn about the latest neuroscience and cognitive psychology findings on imagination. We will look at imagination through the lens of Plato, Freud and Jung, as well as the art and thought of William Blake and the Surrealists. We’ll take a deep dive into the relationship betweenimagination and altered states of consciousness, and end with a look at monsters in religion, cryptozoology in literature, and imaginative transformations in film.

SCHEDULE

Week One: The Neuroscience and Evolution of Imagination. Here Dr. Asma will focus on the latest neuroscience and cognitive psychology about the imagination. Where in the brain and body does imagination appear to reside? How and why did imagination evolve?

Week Two: The Unconscious and Imagination. In this week we will tour ideas from Plato through Freud and Jung, bringing the therapeutic aspects of imagination up to date by looking at recent applications of imagination therapy in trauma cases.

Week Three: Imagination in the Psychedelic and Esoteric Traditions: Ecstasy and Insight. The imagination is often connected to altered states of consciousness. This week we will look at case studies from esoteric Buddhism, alchemy, and the recent Renaissance of psychotropics.

Week Four: Living Imaginatively. From the Romantics like William Blake, the Pataphysicians and Surrealists like Alfred Jarry and Salvador Dali, to the current Virtual Reality devotees, we are all “Player One” in our own adventure stories. In this week we will examine techniques for increasing imaginative play in our art, relationships, and life generally. The relationship between moral imagination and empathy will also be discussed.

Week Five: Gods and Monsters. In this final week we will discuss famous and lesser-known case studies from religion, cryptozoology, literature, and film that were born of the imagination and continue to spark imaginative transformations. What are some of our most sticky cultural memes of the imagination?

Each week Stephen will present a 45-50 minute illustrated presentation of the material and then guide conversation and discussion with the participants for the remainder of class time. Optional readings in PDF form will be shared with participants ahead of time.

Stephen Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, and co-founder of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture.

He is author of ten books, including The Emotional Mind (Harvard University Press, 2019), The Evolution of Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and On Monsters (Oxford University Press, 2009). He has lectured at Harvard, Oxford, the Smithsonian, University of Chicago, and many more. He writes regularly for the New York Times and Aeon magazine.

Asma has lived and taught in Phnom Penh Cambodia, Beijing, and Shanghai China.

As a musician Stephen has played live music with Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and many more blues and jazz artists. He has also been a part-time professional illustrator for several books, and an award winning plein air painter.

Some of his views on the imagination can be seen here: https://aeon.co/essays/why-we-need-a-new-kind-of-education-imagination-studies

IMAGES

1. Symbolist’s Odilon Redon, The Cyclops, circa 1900

2. From C G Jung’s Red Book

3. Performance of pataphysicist Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi

4. From Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion by William Blake, plate 53, printed in 1821. Courtesy the Yale Center for British Art