Contributor

John W. Traphagan

Professor of Religious Studies and Human Dimensions of Organizations, University of Texas, Austin

John is Professor of Religious Studies and Human Dimensions of Organizations at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Trustee of METI International and a Fulbright scholar. His research interests revolve round two primary areas: religion and society in Japan and the relationship between science and culture. The author of over 40 scholarly articles and several books, John's publications include Rethinking Autonomy: A Critique of Principlism in Biomedical Ethics, (2013), Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan (2000) and The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan (2004). His most recent book is Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Imagination: SETI and the Intersection of Science, Religion, and Culture (2015). John received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in social anthropology, his MAR degree from Yale Divinity School in ethics, and a BA in political science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. His postdoctoral research was conducted as a National Institute on Aging Postdoctoral Fellow at the Population Studies Center of the University of Michigan.