Course Description

This 8 week course (now planned for January - February 2025) will trace the emergence and continued subsistence of the UFO phenomenon in American culture, from its origins in the Cold War era to its endurance in the Digital Age.

The course operates on the following premises:

1. The UFO phenomenon and the culture that surrounds it can only be properly understood through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates historical, folkloric, and anthropological perspectives.

2. The UFO phenomenon, along with other so-called “fringe beliefs,” exists as a site of struggle between believers and nonbelievers over what constitutes “normative belief” in contemporary American culture.

In dealing with topics such as contemporary folk traditions, Cold War paranoia, conspiracy culture, and new religious movements, this course will teach students to critically examine how contemporary belief systems are formulated and integrated into popular culture, as well as how these beliefs inhabit “battlegrounds” of meaning between modern rationalist and quasi-religious ideologies.