Biography

Grant W. Shoffstall is a cultural and historical sociologist. He teaches courses on the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology, social theory (classical and contemporary), and the sociology of religion. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining the Sociology Department at Rowan, he taught at Williams College and Illinois Wesleyan University.

Professor Shoffstall’s research examines the sociohistorical ties between Cold War technoscience (especially the science of cybernetics), the dramatically shifting political terrain of the 1960s and 70s, and the attendant emergence of new and alternative religious movements. He is especially interested in “hybrid” movements and other marginal social formations situated at the “nexus” of religion and science (e.g., the Church of Scientology, Transhumanism, Heaven’s Gate), and the questions they necessarily raise about conventional accounts of secularization, the sacred, and disenchantment/re-enchantment. He is presently completing a book manuscript that approaches these matters through an extended case study of cryonic suspension, or “cryonics,” the highly contested practice of freezing the deceased in hopes of eventual revival by way of future technoscience.

When he is not writing, reading, or teaching, Professor Shoffstall enjoys folk horror, science-fiction, live music, and cooking for his friends and family