Keynote speakers announced for IASD's 27th annual dream conference

Keynote Speaker Jeremy Taylor, DMin

Attention Bay Area dreamers! The keynote speakers have been announced for the IASD's 27th annual conference to be held in Asheville, North Carolina, June 27th through July 1st, 2010. Jeremy Taylor, DMin, Antonio Zadra, PhD and Lee Irwin, PhD will be the featured guests as well as the highest quality of dream-related symposiums, panels, workshops, and papers with international representation. Keep an eye on the IASD conference website for a complete listing of presentations.

Jeremy Taylor, DMin will present "Timeless Wisdom of Our Dreams: A Founder's View of IASD's Evolving Purpose & Identity Over the Next 25 Years." As one of the original four co-founders of IASD, (along with the late Strephon Williams, Patricia Garfield, and Gayle Delaney). Jeremy always speaks extemporaneously and passionately. From the very beginnings of IASD Jeremy has been an articulate advocate of the view of dreams are the primal source for the search for meaning. He says, “dreams are the workshop of evolution - both individual and collective - and IASD is an institutional steward of this archetypal tradition.”

Jeremy Taylor's ground-breaking work with dreams, myths, and evolutionary social change led to his ordination as a free-thinking Unitarian Universalist Minister in 1980. He has published several books, at least two of which have become acknowledged classics in the field. He is one of the four original co-founders of IASD. He has devoted his life to the “democratization” of dream work, advocating, and training people all over the world to do “group projective dream work.” Currently, he lives with Kathryn Taylor, his wife of 40 years, in Northern California, where he continues to write, teach, counsel, and make art.
 

Keynote Speaker Antonio Zadra, PhD

Representing the research community, Dr. Antonio Zadra, PhD will present "Dream content, waking states and well-being:
Why dreaming is psychologically meaningful." Although many contemporary dream researchers suggest that dreaming is functionally significant, some argue that dreams are epiphenomenal to neurophysiological activity during REM sleep. This presentation will review work indicating that dreams show systematic relationships to various dimensions of the dreamer’s waking life. Particular attention will be given to studies highlighting robust relations between waking levels of well-being and dream content, including with recurrent dreams and nightmares. These findings indicate that dreams can be conceptualized as simulations that enact the person’s life concerns and interests, including emotionally salient interpersonal preoccupations. In essence, science shows us that far from being a random creation or insignificant event, dream content is a unique and meaningful product of the human brain.

Antonio Zadra, Ph.D., is a Full Professor at the Université de Montréal’s Department of Psychology, Director of the university’s Dream Laboratory, and a Senior Research Scholar of the Quebec Health Research Fund. He is a past member of the IASD Board of Directors. His research interests include recurrent dreams, nightmares, somnambulism, and the assessment and treatment of parasomnias and dream-related disorders. He has authored over 150 scientific articles, abstracts, and book chapters on dreams, nightmares and parasomnias and his work has also been featured in several documentaries (PBS-NOVA, BBC, CBC) and popular magazines including Psychology Today, New Scientist, Le Figaro, The Times, Sunday Telegraph, and The New Yorker.

Keynote Speaker Lee Irwin, PhD

Dr. Lee Irwin will present "Cherokee Dreaming and the Politics of Repression. " This talk will begin with Cherokee dreaming practices as recorded in the historical ethnography of the early 19th century. Dr Irwin will give a summary overview of those practices, including a look at the symbolic use of sacred language, diagnostic processes, healing rites, and cosmological perspectives linked to those practices. He will then review the rise of pan-native prophetic movements based in visionary dreams and prophecy which brought native dreaming practices to the attention of non-native people. He will then review the repression of such dreaming practices among native peoples through missionization, federal policy, and attitudes of cultural domination. The “civilizing” of native people was equated with a general repression of native religious practices and resulted in a serious loss of cultural competence for many native people. Coupled with the rise of scientific materialism, and a widespread dismissal of dreaming in Protestant religions, native dreaming went underground only to reemerge in the late 20th century. Dr Irwin will conclude with a review of more current roles of visions and dreams in the native recovery of religious culture, now linked to non-native theories of dreaming and the commodification of dream practices.

Dr. Lee Irwin, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the College of Charleston, is a scholar of world religions with an emphasis on Native American traditions, Western esotericism, hermeticism, contemporary spirituality, mystical cosmology, and transpersonal religious experience as related to dreams and visions. He is the Vice President of the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE), a board member of the Sophia Institute and the Institute for Dream Studies. He has been a workshop leader and group facilitator for over twenty years, particularly in the areas of visionary cosmology and the development of the sacred human. He is the author of many articles and books, including: The Dream Seekers, Visionary Worlds, Awakening to Spirit: On Life, Illumination, and Being,The Alchemy of Soul, and Coming Down From Above: Prophecy, Resistance, and Renewal in Native American Religions.