Amanda Rose Pratt (she/they)

Graduate Fellow, English Department and Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Description of Work:

I study the rhetoric of psychedelics, both broadly and as related specifically to health and medicine. For my mixed methods dissertation project, I am seeking to 1) characterize the features of psychedelic rhetoric; 2) identify relationships between psychedelic experience and the development of health/wellness ideologies and literacy practices; and 3) identify the rhetorical and literacy practices by which health/wellness ideologies continue to be sustained and/or shift over time. To do this, I am collecting qualitative data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with both past participants and facilitators of psychedelic clinical trials. The work in progress I submitted for this symposium represents the non-human subjects chapter and potential article wherein I theorize psychedelic rhetoric through the framework of “conspirituality” and offer a brief case study of the Center for Countering Digital Hate appointed “disinformation dozen” member Kelly Brogan.

I am also involved in psychedelic networks in Madison both within the academy and beyond: as a founding member of an Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Activism and Environmental Research Working Group sponsored by the UW Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE); an advisory member of UW’s emergent Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances; a member of the admissions committee for the new Master’s program in Psychoactive Pharmaceutical Investigation; a data archivist consultant for the Porta Sophia psychedelic prior art library; and a member of the Madison Psychedelic Society community group.

In addition to my current fellowships through the English department and the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, I have received generous support from the Center for Culture, History, and Environment and the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Programs at UW.

Contact: apratt4@wisc.edu | @amandarpy (Twitter and Instagram)