Science of the seance : transnational networks and gendered bodies in the study of psychic phenomena, 1918-40 / Beth A. Robertson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Robertson, Beth A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Parapsychology--Research--History--20th century.

Parapsychology.

Spiritualism--Research--History--20th century.

Spiritualism.

Parapsychology and science--History--20th century.

Parapsychology and science.

Science and spiritualism--History--20th century.

Science and spiritualism.

Parapsychologists--History--20th century.

Parapsychologists.

Sex role.

History.

Research.

Parapsychology--Research.

Physical Description:

x, 242 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Vancouver ; Toronto : UBC Press, [2016]

Summary:

"Beth A. Robertson resurrects the story of a group of men and women who sought to transform the séance into a laboratory of the spirits and a transnational empirical project. Her findings cast new light on how science, metaphysics, and the senses collided to inform gendered norms in the 1920s and '30s. She reveals a world inhabited, on one side, by psychical researchers who represented themselves as masters of the senses, untainted by the effeminized subjectivity of the body and, on the other, by mediums and ghostly subjects who could and did challenge the researchers' exclusive claims to scientific expertise and authority."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 The "Scientific Self": Performative Masculinity in the Psychical Laboratory 20

2 Otherworldly Subjects: Mediums and Spirits 49

3 A Touch of the Uncanny: Sensing a Material Otherworld 74

4 The Qualities of Quartz: Technology, Inscriptions, and Mechanizing Vision 99

5 Fragments of a Spectral Self: Psychology, Medicine, and Aberrant Souls 127

6 Teleplasmic Mechanics: Spirit Scientists and Vital Technologies 146.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Robertson, Beth A. (Beth Anne), 1981-, author. Science of the seance.

ISBN:

9780774833493

0774833491

OCLC:

955601260