This class has been cancelled and replaced with Vampirism Gone Viral: Medical Misinformation and Vaccine Hesitancy. Ticket buyers and passholders have been contacted via email.
Horror always reflects the perils and anxieties of its own time, and yet in spite of decades of innovation in popular media, the genre has never strayed far from that ur-scape of terror and torment: A place called Hell. Dr. D. W. Pasulka will take on the role of Virgil, leading you through a tour of the variegated hells, purgatories, and otherworlds in select horror films and recent media. We will journey through the sadomasochistic dungeons of Clive Barker’s HELLRAISER (1987); the existential techno nightmare of EVENT HORIZON (1997); the Basque fantasy world of ERREMENTARI (2017); and the fact-based (however fantastical) B- movie franchise THE CONJURING, among other media. Along the way we will learn about the historical precedents for these images. The Catholic view of a punishing afterworld has shifted in meaning and consequence over time; there is the latter day conceit that Purgatory is a spiritual “condition of existence”, and there is the older idea of its absolutely material reality. This course will explore why the specific aesthetic derived from medieval Catholicism survives today and forms a template that informs much of the horror genre.
Dr. D. W. Pasulka is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work spans Catholic history to modern day reports of UAPs and UFOs. Her recent book, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology (Oxford, 2019) has been featured in Vice, Vox, Fox News, Tank, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Publisher’s Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews. She has presented her research at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, universities, and has been an invited speaker internationally and at various museums and public radio stations. She is also the author of Heaven Can Wait (Oxford University Press 2014); two co-authored books about religion and technology; and numerous academic essays. In cooperation with the Vatican, she is the lead of the translation project of the canonization records of the saint, Joseph of Copertino. Her latest book, Encounters, will be released in Fall 2023 with St. Martin’s Essentials. Additionally, Dr. Pasulka consults about religion and history for movies and television, including THE CONJURING (2013).
