BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Encountering Ayahuasca in the devil's paradise: Amazonian science 
 and Victorian violence in the nineteenth century - Taylor E. Dysart (Unive
 rsity of Pennsylvania)
DTSTART:20230213T130000Z
DTEND:20230213T140000Z
UID:TALK195331@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Silvia M. Marchiori
DESCRIPTION:This talk explores how nineteenth-century naturalists simultan
 eously characterized caapí\, a liana\, or thick woody vine\, as a valuabl
 e global botanical specimen and a potent Amazonian narcotic. After Richard
  Spruce (1817–1893)\, a British botanist\, first observed the Tukano peo
 ples consuming caapí in 1852\, he eagerly began to collect and classify p
 lant specimens as well as accompanying cultural artifacts and ethnographic
  observations. Along with the Yorkshireman\, naturalists from along the Am
 ericas speculated as to which Indigenous tribes consumed caapí and for wh
 at purpose\, and which plants were responsible for the remarkable effects 
 that they had observed. Informed by debates about the abolition of slavery
  in Brazil and the violent extractive economies of the Amazon\, these natu
 ralists came to understand caapí as intertwined with tropical degeneratio
 n\, primitivism\, and the infamous 'narcotics' of the nineteenth century.
LOCATION:Zoom
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR