Thinking about the Impossible is a two-day interdisciplinary symposium examining how societies define, contest, and adjudicate the boundaries of the real. Bringing together leading scholars from the humanities and social sciences alongside scientific, legal, and policy perspectives, the symposium situates today’s debates over anomalous experience — miracles, UFOs, and unexplained phenomena — within much longer traditions of interpreting extraordinary events. Rather than adjudicating any particular claim, sessions ask how institutions and societies negotiate uncertainty, authority, and evidence, from early modern ecclesiastical tribunals to contemporary legislative hearings, and what that negotiation reveals about power, credibility, and the structures of myth and narrative that hold a culture together.
Want to attend? Please fill out our interest form at forms.gle/yt1NnpDnkh7Yyb2R9 to be notified as details are confirmed. We hope as many people as possible can attend, but space is limited, and we are prioritizing scholars, students, archivists, and researchers.
See yaleimpossible2026.github.io for more details.
PROGRAM
Full schedule to be announced. Sessions will run across two days:
Friday, December 4 — Day One
Saturday, December 5 — Day Two
PARTICIPANTS
- Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University
- Diana Walsh Pasulka, UNC Wilmington
- Bradford Bouley, UC Santa Barbara
- Dmitry Kurakin, University of Virginia
- Jamie Lewis, Cardiff University
- Susan Lepselter, Indiana University
- Diana Espírito Santo, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Greg Eghigian, Penn State
- Matthew Bowman, Claremont Graduate University
- Hannah Marcus, Harvard University
- Marina Weiler, University of Virginia
- Stephen C. Finley, Louisiana State University
- Peter Skafish, Sol Foundation
- Wes Watters, Wellesley College
- Aaron French, University of Copenhagen
- Annalisa Ventola, Parapsychological Association
- Kimberly Engels, Molloy University
- Steven Koh, Yale, Boston University
Full bios and links at yaleimpossible2026.github.io
CONVENED BY
- Carlos Eire, T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies
- Ivano Dal Prete, Senior Lecturer, History and History of Science, Medicine & Public Health
- Philip Smith, Professor of Sociology; Director, Center for Cultural Sociology
- Etienne Caron, Assistant Professor of Immunobiology
With additional help from
- Sri Tata, PhD Candidate in Mathematics
- Clayton Goodgame, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale Institute of Sacred Music
SPONSORS
- Whitney Humanities Center
- Center for Cultural Sociology
- Program in the History of Science and Medicine
- Department of History
- Department of Black Studies
- Society for UAP Studies