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Please join us for our Spring 2026 Colloquium series!
SGDE Professor Dr. JP Jones III presents:
Anomalistic Geographies and the Case for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
Abstract: Anomalous phenomena can be classified across several domains, including ufology (e.g., unidentified anomalous phenomena, alien witnessing, contact or abduction), cryptozoology (e.g., Sasquatch, sea-serpents), parapsychology (e.g., ghosts, telepathy, near death experiences), and earth mysteries (e.g., crop circles, earthlights). These phenomena are overlooked by most geographers, leaving them to the margins of the discipline based on a presumed irrelevance to the field or doubts about their very existence qua objects. Among those who have undertaken studies of anomalous phenomena, most have investigated not the objects and those informants who bear witness to them, but their wider socio-cultural reception, thus permitting them to remain agnostic vis-à-vis the anomaly’s ontic status. To broaden the study of these controversial phenomena, both on their own terms and in terms of their socio-cultural significance, we aim here for a more general accounting of such studies under the subfield of “anomalistic geographies,” which we propose for inclusion within the extant interdisciplinary field of anomalistics. In reviewing the theoretical and methodological orientations and substantive concerns of existing anomalistic studies within geography, we provide something of an entry point for welcoming the much-neglected study of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, also known as UFOs) within this nascent subfield. We then survey the rise of ufology in the contemporary era and suggest a theoretical pathway toward geographic inquiry – via ontological shock and ontological alterity – in what remains, despite huge scientific and popular interest, the least examined of all anomalous phenomena within the discipline.
Key Words: anomalistics, earth mysteries, extraterrestrial life, Fortean geographies, Indigenous ontologies, monstrous geographies, spectral geographies, ontological shock, ontological alterity, UAP, UFOs.
This talk is free to attend and takes place in ENR2 Room S230 on Friday, April 3, 2026 from 3:30-5pm. All are welcome!
ZOOM LINK: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/83082433613
Followed by Happy Hour at Screwbean (103 N Park Ave)