The word “ecstasy” derives its meaning from the Greek ekstasis, meaning “to stand outside of or transcend [oneself],” and has been used to describe a variety of forms of experience – sexual, spiritual, and aesthetic, to name a few. Sometimes blissful, sometimes miserable, sometimes both, ecstasy challenges us to think beyond borders and beyond limits; it is, in essence, excessive. In a historical moment which bears witness to rising international fascism, late-stage capitalist crises, and psychosocial despair, can ecstasy itself provide a way of thinking an alternative politics and sociality? From the writings of medieval Christian mystics like Angela de Foligno to contemporary horror films like Clive Barker’s 1987 classic Hellraiser, the connection between ecstasy and limit experiences has provoked abundant aesthetic attention. Investigations into this relationship, such as those undertaken by thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Martin Heidegger, have produced a rich and varied theoretical tradition that spans across a wide range of fields, including literary studies, film studies, religious studies, and philosophy. Catholicism has a particularly queasy relationship with ecstasy. The sumptuous visual iconography of the church depicts and generates ecstatic moods, and vows of chastity generate strange economies of desire. With a non-exclusive emphasis on the theo-erotics of Catholicism, this seminar aims to continue this theoretical tradition by bringing together scholars working on the politics of ecstasy across fields and periods. What are the political implications of ecstatic experience? How might the frameworks and language of ecstasy inform sociopolitical critique? How have the desires of and for priests and nuns incited ecstatic experiences in texts and images? What does thinking politics through ecstasy reveal about embodiment and affect, both in the context of extreme political action and the quotidian experiences of the late-capitalist subject? What are the roles of pleasure and pain in a politics of ecstasy?