D.W. Pasulka is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Her current research focuses on religious and supernatural belief and practice and its connections to digital technologies and environments. She is the author and co-editor of numerous books and essays, the most recent of which are Believing in Bits: New Media and the Supernatural, co-edited with Simone Natalie and forthcoming from Oxford University Press, and Posthumanism: the Future of Homo Sapiens, co-edited with Michael Bess (2018). She is also a history and religion consultant for movies and television, including The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring II (2016). She has been the principal investigator for numerous grants, including the Federal grant program Teaching American History, which supported middle school and high school teachers in their efforts to teach religious and American history to public school students throughout North Carolina

"...American Cosmic is well worth the attention of scholars interested in how the religious is both created and functions in the contemporary world." -- Jeremy Rapport, International Journal for the Study of New Religions

"This book deserves to be given attention by those in the religious studies field whose familiarity with UFO Religions is confined to historical cases or more modern personality-driven organizations." -- Aaron John Gulyas, Nova Religio

"refreshingly engaging." -- Benjamin E. Zeller, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"Pasulka's book is nothing short of spectacular and intriguing-a mind-blowing read with fascinating insight. Her research and knowledge present a whole new truth, some of which is very scary, and we don't scare easily." -- Chad and Carey Hayes, writers of The Conjuring and The Conjuring II

"From a solid base of scholarship Dr. Pasulka introduces us to the players at the frontier of biological and physical research. Her sharp insight is drawn from her research into spiritual phenomena, updated by her travels from the purported UFO crash sites of New Mexico to the archives of the Vatican. The result is a timely introduction to the revelations in our collective future." -- Jacques F. Vallée, author of Wonders in the Sky

"UFOs are a remarkable phenomenon that both believers and skeptics initially have a hard time connecting to religion. American Cosmic is a vivid and even moving account of the way this strange world works as a kind of sacred mystery for those within it." -- T.M. Luhrmann, author of When God Talks Back

"[Pasulka] approaches UFO believers with an open mind in her irresistible debut . . . lively character sketches bring the story to life . . . Pasulka gives wonderful, entertaining insight into the curious study of UFOs." -- Publishers Weekly

"Pasulka makes a reasonable case that the spirits, angels, divine messengers, manifestations of God, aliens or their spaceships that humans have been reporting since the dawn of history are too numerous to be entirely delusional, so they deserve serious investigation." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A thought-provoking book about religion today." -- Booklist

"American Cosmic is a superb investigation into the birth and rise of a new religion." -- Foreword Reviews

"The book as a whole is a highly sensitive, and erudite." -- Paradigm Explorer

"D.W. Pasulka's American Cosmic has all the trappings of a sober ethnographic study of unidentified flying objects. Its organizing thesis holds that belief in the existence of shapeshifting extraterrestrial visitors can be understood as an emergent religion, offering communion with a higher power, reassurance of universal interconnectedness, and a simplifying explanation for a chaotic world." -- Nathaniel Rich, The New York Review

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Pub date: 2019-02-20

Length: 288 pages