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Welcome Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka


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Randall

Randall

J. Randall Murphy
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7177

Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka
Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion - University of North Carolina Wilmington​

7176Dr. Pasulka Walsh's research focuses on religion and technology, including supernatural belief and its connections to digital technologies and environments.

She is author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. Her current projects include two edited volumes, Believing in Bits: New Media and the Supernatural, co-edited with Simone Natalie, and Post Humanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens, co-edited with Michael Bess and forthcoming with Palgrave MacMillan Reference.

American Cosmic is a fascinating study of the subject of UFOs and extraterrestrials by one of the country’s innovative scholars. Dr. Pasulka travels from the desert of New Mexico to Silicon Valley, as well as the Vatican Secret Archive and Space Observatory. She has interviewed brilliant scientists who believe their innovative technologies are inspired by alien artifacts.

Unfortunately the show has had to be rescheduled, but we'll leave the thread open so that you can continue to post questions questions or comments you'd like feedback on below:
 
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Having read American Cosmic, I’m wondering about:
  • Pasulka’s views on the difficulty of maintaining academic integrity and scholarly rigor while embedded within the types of groups she’s attempting to study. How does one hold to one’s intellectual detachment when blindfolded and being brought on an alien alloy hunt in the desert?
  • While in her book, she claims not to have been “read in” to any classified programs or information, the supposed prohibition on the broadcast of part of her recent interview with Whitley Strieber would suggest that she’s at least tangentially involved with the intelligence or military communities (or entities that want her to think she is). Does she sometimes wonder if she’s this generation’s Paul Bennewitz or, indeed, this generation’s Bill Moore?
  • Is she at all concerned that most of the online buzz about the book has been about this manner of UFOlogical cloak and daggerism rather than the very useful contribution it makes to religious studies scholarship on UFO belief?
  • Besides Jeff Kripal, who are some good religious studies people who have studied the UFO phenomenon
  • Given that you have an edited collection on posthumanism coming out, are you familiar at all with the work of the late Mac Tonnies?
I’m sure I’ll have more questions, but these have been on my list of things to ask her about since reading the book.
 
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