Congratulations to our 2025 Iles Award winner, Patrick Dunn. His project, We Are Not Alone: UFO Myth in the Anthropocene, explores the interplay of mythic and technoscientific forces in the modern UFO phenomenon. By engaging the vast body of UFO contact and close encounter experiences recorded since WWII, it opens a pathway for rethinking the nature of power in the modern world - with its increasing reliance on "technologies of mind," and on a quasi-religious logic of secrecy and initiation.  Patrick is completing his second year as a Ph.D student in the Department of Comparative Studies. He will present this research sometime in the autumn semester as part of the Center for the Study of Religion's "No More Than A Page" series. 

The Robert L. and Phyllis J. Iles Award for Graduate Study of Myth is an award of up to $2500 each spring semester to a graduate student in the Division of Arts and Humanities in support of that student’s research on myth. Studies of the myths of any culture from any period of human history are eligible for consideration. A myth is a story that is sacred to and shared by a group of people who find important meanings in it, as it is conveyed through narrative, art or ritual. Eligible projects include, but are not limited to: the relationships between myths and religious practices, the uses of myth in literary and artistic productions, and the reuse of one culture’s myths by other cultures. Possible approaches include, but are not limited to, the anthropological, the literary, the historical, and the folkloric, as well as creative approaches that aim to represent a myth as part of a new artistic product.