If enough students sign up for the course,  I will be teaching this course about mankind’s curiosity for extraterrestrial contact. We will see classic science fiction films from the 1950s to the present and read the novels the spawned them as well as examine television shows that have become part of our “alien pop culture” for fifty years (Twilight Zone, X-Files). Archival news footage of space exploration (Sputnik, Mercury series, Apollo 11, the ISS, the Hubble, the Mars Rover) will be integrated into the course as well as interviews with Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku. We will examine the historical links between films and television to historical world events as they relate to increased reports of contact. We will read and study about the Roswell Incident in 1947, the Phoenix lights in 1997, and other UFO phenomena revealed by the recent declassification of international government files on UFO sightings. Investigative journalist Leslie Kean, who wrote NY Times best-selling book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials go on Record” about worldwide UFO sightings and global government reports, will be a featured guest speaker, along with Colonel Charles I. Halt, retired U.S. Air Force deputy base commander of RAF Bentwaters in East Anglia, England when on December 26 & 27, 1980 a UFO appeared on the just outside the base and was witnessed by Colonel Halt and several other high security personnel.

It is known as the famous “Rendelsham Forest Incident.”