When the Evidence Changed: A Humanities Professor’s Encounters with Aerospace Insiders

Name: When the Evidence Changed: A Humanities Professor’s Encounters with Aerospace Insiders
Start: 2025-09-29T12:45:00-04:00
Location: Tinkham Veale University Center Senior Classroom

Schedule

Mon, 29 Sep, 2025 at 12:45 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Tinkham Veale University Center Senior Classroom | Cleveland, OH

What happens when a scholar of religion is confronted with evidence that challenges the boundaries between science, belief, and the unexplained? In this provocative talk, Dr. Diana Pasulka, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, recounts her unexpected journey into the world of aerospace insiders and emergent technologies that blur the line between the natural and the supernatural. Drawing on more than a decade of research and access to technologists, scientists, and intelligence-adjacent thinkers, Pasulka describes how her ethnographic exploration of space research communities profoundly reshaped both her personal belief and scholarly method. A story of intellectual risk, cross-disciplinary inquiry, and transformation, this talk invites the audience to consider how the humanities can—and must—respond to radically new forms of evidence.
Boxed lunches will be provided at 12:30 pm. Registration requested.
About the speaker:
Diana Walsh Pasulka (Heath) is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and the author of the critically acclaimed books American Cosmic and Encounters. Her research examines the intersection of technology, belief, and contemporary accounts of the supernatural, known as new religious movements. With appearances on The Joe Rogan Experience, Shawn Ryan Show, and features in The New York Times, Wired, and The Atlantic, Pasulka has become a leading voice in public-facing scholarship about religious experience and unexplained aerial phenomena, also known as UFOs. Her latest book, The Supraterrestrial, explores the convergence of artificial intelligence, visionary theology, and posthuman speculation.