Brenda Denzler received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Duke University, where she specialized in studying "centers and peripheries" in the Christian religious tradition -- i.e., orthodoxies and mainstream manifestations of religion compared to heterodoxies, heresies, and more marginal manifestations. She has presented papers on women's movements in early Christianity, studied various medieval religious movements, and taught about modern-day New Religious Movements. Her recent book, The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs, looks at the ways that the study of UFOs has been marginalized in the scientific world by calling it "nothing but" a religious quest, while in the religious world the idea of extraterrestrial contact (and those professing to have had such contact) has been largely ignored. 

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