Contributors

Timothy Grieve-Carlson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Rice, where his research focuses on religion and ecology in American history. Timothy holds graduate certificates from the Center for Critical and Cultural Theory (3CT) at Rice and in Gnosticism, Esotericism and Mysticism (GEM) from the Department of Religion. Timothy’s dissertation research analyzes the roles of environmental knowledge and miraculous phenomena in the apocalyptic discourses of early Pennsylvania.
Derek Lee is an Assistant Professor of English at Wake Forest University. His research and teaching traverse twentieth and twenty-first century literature, science and technology studies, and epistemology. His current book project explores the paranormal mind in twentieth-century literature and science.
Nat Mengist is a Research Assistant at the University of Washington Bothell, where he manages data processing for the Learning in Places study, which co-designs equitable science education for outdoor learning environments. Trained in Comparative History of Ideas and Education Policy at UW, Nat has been presenting research on plants and alchemy at academic conferences since 2017, and recently co-taught an undergraduate research intensive titled “Creating Alternate Worlds" for the 2019 Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities.
Christine Skolnik is a freelance writer and a mentor to first-generation college students in the Chicago area. Her current areas of focus are ecology, history of empiricism, history of religion, and paranormal studies. A former academic, Christine earned a PhD in English/Rhetoric from Penn State and, more recently, an MA in Urban Sustainability and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She is a trained Spiritual Director and has a longstanding, scholarly interest in comparative spirituality.

Sam Stoeltje is a PhD student in the Department of English Literature at Rice University. They study U.S. literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, with topical focus on settler imaginaries, alternative knowledges and abjected or non-modern spiritualities. One of their major theoretical commitments involves a re-evaluation of Derrida’s concept of hauntology, informed by decolonial and indigenous thought as well as the border theory of Gloria Anzaldúa. They enjoy cooking, horror films, and attending to déjà vu and synchronicity.