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ProgramFriday, March 4 th - Room 4/59:00 Welcome Coffee9:30 “Mania in The Bacchae,” Roelof Overmeer, withSarah-Jane Moloney and Michael Gröneberg (UNIL)10:15 Break10:30 Plenary: “Drugs of Abuse to Enhance Creativity?”Dr. Christian Luscher (UNIGE)12:00 Lunch14:00 Workshop with Dr. Luscher (everyone welcome)15:45 Coffee Break16:00 “Drugs, Dreams and the Unconscious: Thomas DeQuincey’s Language of the Mental Landscape,” MarkusIseli (UNINE)16:30 “Mimetic Mania,” Nidesh Lawtoo (UNIL)17:00 Break17:30 Plenary: “Reading, Writing, Ecstasy,” Prof. AmyHollywood (Harvard Divinity School)19:00 Dinner20:00 Reception/party in the Pavillion with DigbyThomas

Saturday, March 5 th - Room 4/59:00 Workshop with Amy Hollywood (students only)10:45 Break11:00 “War and Ecstasy: The Example of Berserkers inViking Sagas,” Roberto Biolzi (UNIL)11:30 “‘Maybe I'm Crazy’: Medieval Female Mystics andAltered States,” Juliette Vuille (UNIL)12:00 Lunch14:00 Plenary: “Tickets That Exploded: Materialist andMystical Models of Self Dissolution in the Beats,”Prof. Marcus Boon (York University)15:00 Coffee Break15:30 – 17:30 Workshop with Marcus : texts by A.Ginsberg and J. Giorno (students only)19:00 Dinner at the Hotel Alpha-Palmiers (Thairestaurant) in Lausanne by train station (34, RuePetit-Chêne)

Plenary SpeakersDr. Christian Lüscher University of GenevaAuthor of Addiction: The Dark Side of Learning (2008),Professor Lüscher focuses in his research at theUniversity of Geneva on the cellular mechanisms ofdependence and addiction. Author of numerous articlesand monographs, he also lectures regularly onneuroscience to non-specialist audiences.Friday, 10:30 a.m.: “Drugs of Abuse to Enhance Creativity?”Prof. Amy Hollywood Harvard Divinity SchoolAuthor of The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild ofMagdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart(University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), which receivedthe Otto Grundler Prize for the best book in medievalstudies from the International Congress of MedievalStudies; Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference,and the Demands of History (University of Chicago Press,2002); and, forthcoming from Columbia University Press,Acute Melancholia and Other Essays. She is also the coeditor,with Patricia Beckman, of the forthcomingCambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, and theeditor of the "Gender, Theory, and Religions" series forColumbia University Press.Friday, 5:30 p.m.: “Reading Writing, Ecstasy”

Prof. Marcus Boon York UniversityAuthor of The Road of Excess: A History of Writers onDrugs (Harvard UP, 2002), Marcus Boon teachescontemporary literature and theory at York University.His interests include modernism and its aftermaths,relations between science and literature, alternativeand countercultures, popular music, and the culturalstudy of spirituality and religion. He is also theauthor of In Praise of Copying (Harvard UP, forthcoming)and the introduction to Walter Benjamin's On Hashish(Harvard UP, 2006).Saturday, 2 p.m.: “Tickets That Exploded: Materialist andMystical Models of Self Dissolution in the Beats”Organizers:Denis Renevey, Professor of Medieval Literature,University of Lausanne (denis.renevey@unil.ch)Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, Assistant Professor ofAmerican Literature, University of Lausanne(agnieszka.soltysikmonnet@unil.ch)

Itinarary from/to puidoux stationTrain TimetableTrains leave Puidoux for Lausanne at 11, 24 and 41* pasteach hour (*the 41 trains run only on Friday). The lasttrain on Friday is at 23:25 (no train at 22:41).Trains for Vevey leave at 36 past each hour (last trainon Friday is at 22:50, no train at 22:36)