James Penner is the editor of Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years (2014) and the author of Pinks, Pansies, and Punks: The Rhetoric of Masculinity in American Literary Culture (2011).
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
The Anatomy of the LSD Romance in the 1970s: On Errol Morris’s “My Psychedelic Love Story”
James Penner analyzes the life and times of Joanna Harcourt-Smith and Errol Morris’s recent film about her, “My Psychedelic Love Story.”...
Psychedelic Pioneer and Confidence Man
A new biography of Michael Hollingshead, the man who turned Timothy Leary on....
Tackling Three-Letter Words — LSD, Sex, and God: An Interview with T. C. Boyle
T. C. Boyle dives down the rabbit hole of sex, drugs, and God in his interview with James Penner....
Blowing the Philosopher’s Fuses: Michel Foucault’s LSD Trip in the Valley of Death
James Penner takes a trip through “Foucault in California” by Simeon Wade, which chronicles the day when a great French philosopher blew his mind....
“Outside Looking In”: T. C. Boyle’s Drama of Expanded Consciousness and LSD
T. C. Boyle's "Outside Looking In" highlights the sober experience of coming back to reality when the trip is over....
A Guide for Psychedelic Virgins and Skeptics?
The publication of "How to Change Your Mind" in 2018 is one of many indications that we are witnessing a cultural sea change with regard to psychedelics....
Resuscitating the Psychedelic Sensibility
Jon Savage’s "1966" looks at a pivotal year in history via its music....
David Bowie and the 1970s: Testing the Limits of the Gendered Body
David Bowie and the 1970s: Testing the Limits of the Gendered Body...
The Rise and Fall of LSD
The history of LSD in the United States, and its strange path from legitimacy to illegitimacy, is a fascinating tale that needs to be better understood....
