Weird Studies and the Center for Possible Minds present Weird Academia, a series of events exploring ideas that challenge the conventional boundaries of scholarship.
All Weird Academia events take place at Indiana University Bloomington during the last week of January, 2026.
All events are free.
The occult, mysticism, hauntings, telepathy, UFOs, spirit mediumship: the study of such phenomena seldom finds a home in mainstream academia. Intellectual work on the Weird comes in conflict with unspoken and entrenched metaphysical assumptions within the academy. Consequently, serious thinking on the Weird has mostly taken place in para-academic spaces, its best thinkers intellectually sophisticated but institutionally unhoused. The purpose of Weird Academia is to consider how a conversation that flourishes in unlicensed and liminal spaces might find a foothold in academia and, at the same time, how academia might benefit from a closer walk with the Weird.
Weird Academia Events
Tuesday, January 27, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. at the McCalla School Gallery: Opening event for an exhibition of photographs from Shannon Taggart’s Séance
Shannon Taggart first learned of Spiritualism as a teenager after a medium revealed details about her grandfather’s death that proved true. In 2001, she began photographing in the town where that message was received: Lily Dale, New York. Her project soon expanded to include séance rooms around the world in a quest to find and photograph ectoplasm — the elusive substance that is said to be both spiritual and material. Drawing from her acclaimed book Séance, this exhibition presents works from a twenty-year investigation into Spiritualism, exploring the religion’s obscured history and its intrinsic relationship with the medium of photography.
Shannon Taggart is a photographer and independent researcher based in St. Paul, MN. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles, the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, the Robert Mann Gallery in New York, and the Gallery of Everything in London. Her book, Séance, was named one of TIME Magazine’s ‘Best Photobooks of 2019’ and has been featured by CNN, Bookforum, The New York Times, the London Financial Times, Le Monde, The Washington Post, and The Paris Review, among others. Currently, she is working on an illustrated book on one of the strangest cases in the history of parapsychology, the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT).
This exhibition is free and runs from January 27 to April 1.
Wednesday, January 28, 7:00 p.m. at the IU Cinema: Screening of Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980) with a live episode of Weird Studies to follow
Altered States is the ultimate cinematic head trip of the 1980s. British renegade Ken Russell’s first Hollywood production — adapted by the legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky from his own novel — is part hallucinogenic freak-out, part gonzo creature feature, part transcendent love story, all played at a fever pitch. When researcher Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) begins using himself as a test subject for his mind-expanding psychological experiments, it sends him on an increasingly dangerous, substance-fueled odyssey from humankind’s primordial past to the outer limits of consciousness. It’s all visualized by Russell in a psychedelic supernova of out-there imagery that encompasses everything from the pagan to the cosmic sublime, culminating in a brain-wave-blasting battle between the mind and the heart. If ever there were such a thing as a “weird academia” movie, it would be Altered States.
Weird Studies is an arts and philosophy podcast devoted to ideas that are hard to think, phenomena that resist settled explanations, and art that trails a scent of wonder. Every other Wednesday, professor Phil Ford and writer JF Martel open up the filing cabinet of our collective mind and take out the bulging file folder labelled “weird/other.” In there we find all the mysteries that terrify and fascinate us.
This event is free but ticketed. You can reserve your seat HERE from January 6 onwards.
Thursday, January 29, 7:00 p.m. at the Buskirk Chumley Theater: Weird Academia
The keystone event of Weird Academia is a conversation that brings together artists and thinkers from both inside and outside the academy to stage an encounter with the Weird. The evening assembles a remarkable panel of thinkers and creators from the intellectual sphere of the Weird: IU professor Phil Ford and Canadian philosopher J. F. Martel of the Weird Studies podcast; IU professor Jacob Foster, whose work imagines a science of the possible; religious studies scholar Jeffrey Kripal, whose influential writings challenge humanists to confront the paranormal; artist Shannon Taggart, known for her uncanny spiritualist photography; primatologist Cat Hobaiter, whose research on non-human communication opens new frontiers of understanding; and public intellectual Erik Davis, whose writings on esoterica and media culture defy categorization.
Expect a night of startling ideas, unexpected connections, and intellectual explorations freed from disciplinary constraints. Whether you're a seeker, skeptic, or simply intrigued by the unknown, Weird Academia promises a mind-expanding journey into the outer edges of thought.
This event is free but ticketed. You can reserve a ticket HERE.