Diana Pasulka is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and the author of a forthcoming book on American Catholic history called "Purgatory and the Rise of the Gothic in American Popular Culture" (Oxford University), as well as numerous articles on American Catholic history and children's culture. She received her MA in Religious Studies from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. She lives in Wilmington, NC with her husband Dan and their five children.