Pre-Conference Webinars

Gustavo Rodrigues Rocha joined Jeffrey J. Kripal, associate dean of the School of Humanities and the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, on April 19, 2023, for the first of three online conversations designed to set up and foretell the conversations to take place during the May 11-13, 2023, conference at Rice entitled "Archives of the Impossible: Transnationalism, Transdisciplinarity, Transcendence." A physicist by training and holding a MA and PhD in History of Science, Gustavo Rodrigues Rocha is a professor in the Department of Physics at the State University of Feira de Santana and a faculty member at the Graduate Program in Teaching, Philosophy and History of Sciences UFBA-UEFS, Brazil. Working primarily on epistemology, philosophy and history of science, Rocha has been interested in the construction, circulation and dissolution of “world-views” throughout the history of modern science, and specially in what he has named the “rejected episteme” of our modern thought or, alternatively, the “shadow episteme” of modern science, philosophy and technology.

Yvonne Chireau joined Jeffrey J. Kripal, associate dean of the School of Humanities at Rice University and the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, on April 26, 2023, for the second of three online conversations in advance of the May 11-13, 2023, conference at Rice entitled "Archives of the Impossible: Transnationalism, Transdisciplinarity, Transcendence." Yvonne Chireau is the Peggy Chan Professor of Black Studies and a professor in the Department of Religion at Swarthmore College, where she teaches courses on religion theory, Africana religions and African American religious history. She is the author of "Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition" (2003) and the co-editor of "Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism" (1999). She is currently working on a new book tentatively titled "Graphic Voodoo, Comics, and the Imagining of Black Religions." Her musings on the historical intersections of magic, Africana religions and cultural tropes of Voodoo can be found online at the research blog "The Academic Hoodoo" (academichoodoo.com).

Joshua Cutchin joined Jeffrey J. Kripal, associate dean of the School of Humanities at Rice University and the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, on May 3, 2023, for the third of three online conversations in advance of the May 11-13, 2023, conference at Rice entitled "Archives of the Impossible: Transnationalism, Transdisciplinarity, Transcendence." Joshua Cutchin is an author and musician specializing in speculative non-fiction. His most recent publication is the two-part 2022 entry entitled "Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death and the Paranormal," which seeks to reconcile ancient concepts of the soul with modern phenomena such as UFOs, fairy sightings, cryptid encounters and extended consciousness. He has headlined as a guest speaker at numerous paranormal conventions throughout the United States, has appeared on hundreds of podcasts, and in 2019 was featured on the History Channel series Ancient Aliens. 2023 will see the release of several new projects from Joshua including "The Ufology Tarot," a collaborative magical art project celebrating the discipline's prominent thinkers.