About

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He has chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and contributed to the creation of the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism, which is the largest of its kind in the world. Currently, he serves as Associate Dean of the Faculty and Graduate Studies in the School of Humanities and is the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Kripal is the editor-in-chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion and has authored eight monographs, including his most recent work, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (2022). His research areas include the comparative method and theory in the study of religion, the history of religions in America, and paranormal currents in the history of science and popular culture. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Conception Seminary College.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Aesthetics
• Theology
• Classics
• History
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Can superhero comics really transmit esoteric knowledge?

  2025-10-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  I may be well placed to answer that question, for my home study resembles a UFO crash site. Take a look (colour plate 11). My desk purports to be an old aluminium airplane wing (it’s not). I sit in an “aviator chair” to read. A “propeller” above me functions as a chrome ceiling fan (it actually is a ceiling fan). Basically, I sit and think in what looks like a dismembered plane from the WW II and early Cold War era – the actual origin of the UFO phenomenon and all of its subsequent American extraterrestrial invasion (read: Cold War) mythologies. Superheroes, particularly a life-size mercurial statue of the Silver Surfer, that pop-cosmic transformation of Hermes (on a silly Californian surfboard), and traditional religious iconography populate the room further, significantly confusing any attempt to place it (or me) in a particular mythological register, either “classical” or “contemporary,” either “East” or “West,” either “high” or “low.” That is all intentional in this particular physical space that is also a kind of extended mind – my own.

  PublisherDOI

• Eric Michael Mazur and Sarah McFarland Taylor (eds.), ‘Religion and Outer Space’

  Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture · 2025-11-03

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  Eric Michael Mazur and Sarah McFarland Taylor (eds.), Religion and Outer Space (London: Routledge, 2024), 267 pp., $39.99 (pbk), ISBN: 978-0-367-54227-6.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Joshua Blu Buhs, <i>Think to New Worlds: The Cultural History of Charles Fort and His Followers</i> Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024. Pp. 384. ISBN 978-0-226-83148-1. $35.00 (cloth).

  The British Journal for the History of Science · 2025-07-21

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is a fantastic book.I will never think the same again, particularly about science fiction and its conscious attempt to see and control the 'motor of history' in the weird.Think to New Worlds is about the reception history of Charles Hoyes Fort (1874-1932) and the 'damned'; that is, that which has been excluded from modern thought and science.Fort authored one novel (The Outcast Manufacturers, 1909), and four books of anomalies drawn mostly from newspapers and journals (The Book

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• At Your Door: A School of Superhumanities

  Religious Studies Review · 2024-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights, The Journals of Jacques Vallee 2000 - 2009

  Journal of Scientific Exploration · 2023-10-19

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights, The Journals of Jacques Vallee

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How to Think Impossibly

  2023-09-18 · 6 citations

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• Kocku von Stuckrad, A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North America from 1870 to the Present

  Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture · 2023-08-09

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Kocku von Stuckrad, A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North America from 1870 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022), 352 pp., $30 (pbk), ISBN: 9780231200370.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Frontmatter

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-03-30

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• Comparing Religions in Public: Rural America, Evangelicals, and the Prophetic Function of the Humanities

  Studies in humanism and atheism · 2022-01-01

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  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: Things We Do Not Talk About

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022

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  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
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Frequent coauthors

• Wouter J. Hanegraaff

  University of Amsterdam

  16 shared

• Rachel Fell McDermott

  15 shared

• Kenneth I. Pargäment

  Bowling Green State University

  9 shared

• James W. Lomax

  Baylor College of Medicine

  9 shared

• Carl Olson

  6 shared

• Jerome Rothenberg

  4 shared

• Herman Rappaport

  University of Notre Dame

  4 shared

• Brian E. Reed

  University of Maryland, Baltimore County

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• History of Religions Prize for Kali’s Child (American Academ…