Science of the Seance

Transnational Networks and Gendered Bodies in the Study of Psychic Phenomena, 1918-40

Beth A. Robertson (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

256 Seiten

2016
University of British Columbia Press (Verlag)
978-0-7748-3349-3 (ISBN)

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In this enthralling study of the ethereal, the scientific, and the strange, Beth A. Robertson investigates the gendered world of the seance, a place where self-proclaimed "psychic researchers" laid claim to objectivity and where spiritual mediums and the spirits they channeled resisted their methods.

In the 1920s and '30s, people gathered in darkened rooms to explore the paranormal through seances. They were motivated by grief, spiritual devotion, or a desire to be entertained. Beth A. Robertson resurrects the story of a small transnational group and their quest for objective knowledge of the supernatural, casting new light on how science, metaphysics, and the senses collided to inform gendered norms in this era.

Robertson draws back the curtain to reveal a world inhabited by researchers, spirits, and spiritual mediums. Representing themselves as masters of the senses, untainted by the effeminized subjectivity of the body, psychical researchers in Canada, the UK, and the US believed that they could use machines and empirical methods to transform the seance into a laboratory of the spirits and a transnational empirical project. However, mediums and ghostly subjects could and did challenge their claims to scientific expertise and authority.

Beth A. Robertson is a historian of gender, science, medicine, and technology who teaches in the History Department at Carleton University. She has published in Gender and History and Nova Religio and is a co-editor of ActiveHistory.ca and the book review editor for Scientia Canadensis.

Groping in the Dark: An Introduction

1 The "Scientific Self ": Performative Masculinity in the Psychical Laboratory

2 Otherworldly Subjects: Mediums and Spirits

3 A Touch of the Uncanny: Sensing a Material Otherworld

4 The Qualities of Quartz: Technology, Inscriptions, and Mechanizing Vision

5 Fragments of a Spectral Self: Psychology, Medicine, and Aberrant Souls

6 Teleplasmic Mechanics: Spirit Scientists and Vital Technologies

The Knot Unravelled: An Epilogue

Notes; Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	10.12.2016
Zusatzinfo	14 photos
Verlagsort	Vancouver
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	500 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Metaphysik / Ontologie
	Naturwissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-7748-3349-1 / 0774833491
ISBN-13	978-0-7748-3349-3 / 9780774833493
Zustand	Neuware