October 29th, 2025 1:00 PM CST
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Chacruna is glad to invite you for a conversation exploring the intersections of humanities education and psychedelic therapy. Just as psychedelic-assisted treatments seek to transform consciousness and support healing, the study of literature, art, and culture has long worked to expand imagination, build empathy, and help us grapple with social and political realities. This forum will examine how core methods of the humanities – such as discussion, critical reflection, and encounters with art and media – overlap with the aims of contemporary psychedelic practice. We’ll ask: How can a deeper grounding in the humanities help psychedelic practitioners better understand the cultural and political consequences of their work? What might a more self-aware, ethically attuned humanities education look like, and how could it support the wellbeing of both students and psychedelic communities? Speakers include Ramzi Fawaz, cultural critic and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Arielle Saiber, professor of Italian Studies at Johns Hopkins University; Darieck Scott, professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley; Jacob Perlson, psychiatrist and psychedelic therapist; and Nico Gusac, Chacruna’s Development and Outreach Support, and researcher in medical anthropology. Together, we’ll reflect on how integrating humanities with psychedelic practice can foster more just, ethical, and transformative approaches.
Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning cultural critic, educator, and public speaker. He is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he currently holds a Romnes Faculty Fellowship for advanced research in the humanities. Fawaz is the author of two books, including “The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics,” (2016) and “Queer Forms,” both published by NYU Press. He is also a contributing editor to the journal “Film Quarterly” where he authors “Imagination Unbound,” a column which explores the radical democratic possibilities of contemporary film and media. He is at work on a new book titled, “How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World.” In it, he argues for an understanding of humanities education as a form of psychedelic therapy, which uses art, literature, and media, instead of psychoactive drugs, to induce positive transformational effects on the wellbeing of generations of students. Fawaz hosts the new podcast Nerd from the Future, which features dynamic conversations with the nation’s leading humanities professors about the state of higher education today.
Arielle Saiber is Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She publishes primarily on Dante, medieval and early modern Italian literature, the history of mathematics and science, and science fiction. Her books include Giordano Bruno and the Geometry of Language (2005), Measured Words: Computation and Writing in Renaissance Italy (2017), and the anthology Images of Quattrocento Florence: Writings on Literature, History and Art (2000). Saiber has been a fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Harvard’s Villa I Tatti, and has received an NEH and other national and international awards for her research. She co-edits the journal Modern Language Notes, the University of Minnesota Press’s book series, “Proximities: Experiments in Nearness,” and the archive Dante Today. She is currently working on altered-states of consciousness narratives in premodern Italy.
Dr. Jacob Perlson is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist providing inpatient and outpatient care in New York City. He has been trained in ketamine therapy, psychedelic therapy and integration, and general psychiatry. Dr. Perlson has spoken nationally on psychedelic psychiatry and has written extensively on mental health in LGBTQ+ communities. He is currently researching the psychedelic workforce with colleagues at Columbia University. Dr. Perlson is dedicated to advancing safe, effective psychedelic treatments and approaches therapy with compassion and medical excellence.
Darieck Scott is a professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Scott is the author of Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics (NYU Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Studies. His previous book, Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination (NYU Press 2010), was awarded the 2011 Alan Bray Memorial Prize for Queer Studies of the Modern Language Association. Scott is the author of the novels The Dream-Slaves (2024), Hex (2007) and Traitor to the Race (1995), and the editor of Best Black Gay Erotica (2004). He has published essays in Callaloo, GLQ, The Americas Review, and American Literary History, and is co-editor with Ramzi Fawaz of the American Literature special issue, “Queer About Comics,” winner of the 2018 Best Special Issue from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
Nico Gusac is pursuing a Master’s in Medical Anthropology and Global Health at Universitat Rovira i Virgili and holds a BA from Bard College, NY, where she critically examined globalization’s adverse effects on public health in the Global South. She works as a Project Manager at a multimedia NGO focused on storytelling and solution-oriented journalism, bringing extensive experience in event planning and logistics. Passionate about psychedelics as tools for consciousness exploration and cultural sense-making, Nico emphasizes the need for systemic change alongside individual healing and advocates for perspectives that transcend purely medicalized frameworks. She serves as Chacruna’s Development and Outreach Support.
