Free lecture by David Hufford, Professor of Medical Humanities, on:

Wednesday, September 3, 2008
10:00am-12:00pm

Hirst Auditorium (Dulles 1)
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
(hospital map)

3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia PA 19104
(driving directions)

This event is free and open to the public, Registration is requested but not required. Register at http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/radiology/MrEd/regform.html.

David Hufford, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of Medical Humanities, with joint appointments in Neural & Behavioral Science, and Family Medicine, at the Penn State College of Medicine. At University of Pennsylvania he is Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies. Dr. Hufford has taught about religion, spirituality and health at the College of medicine since 1974. He won a Templeton Foundation Faith & Medicine Award in 1995 and at Penn he has taught courses in spiritual belief and in alternative medicine since 1979. Dr. Hufford's research is centered on the ethnographic study of the beliefs of ordinary people and their relationship to experience, especially contested beliefs such as complementary and alternative medicine and beliefs regarding the "supernatural." This entails the phenomenological study of spiritual experiences, from mystical and near-death experiences to negative, terrifying experiences, and an examination of their neuropsychological correlates. Hufford's book, The Terror That Comes in the Night (Univ. of PA Press, 1982) documents the relationship between beliefs about "spiritual assault" and the physiologically mediated state known as sleep paralysis, and laid the groundwork for the experience-centered study of belief.

This lecture is part of the Templeton Research Lecture series Mind, Religion & Ethics in Dialogue at the University of Pennsylvania.