Extra-Ordinary Experiences and the Emergence of New Visionary Movements: Mormonism & the Golden Plates

Ann Taves is a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and past president of the American Academy of Religion. She studies the processes by which people attribute meaning to their experiences, approaching the study of religion from the perspectives of both the humanities and the sciences. Her work finds common ground between what our culture perceives as religion and such fields as neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Taves's books include Religious Experience Reconsidered and Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. She earned a PhD from the University of Chicago's Divinity School and currently holds the Virgil Cordano Chair in Catholic Studies at UCSB. Donald Benson Memorial Lecture in Literature, Science, and the Arts