Title Trance speakers : femininity and authorship in spiritual séances, 1850-1930 / Claudie Massicotte

Published Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2017]

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Description 1 online resource (x, 268 pages) : illustrations Contents Introduction -- Historical context : séances and mediumship in Canada -- Framework : interpreting mediums' discourses as unconscious communications -- Healing : mediums and medicine -- Writing : mediums and literary creativity -- Speaking : mediums in the public sphere -- Performing : mediums, science, and the speaking body -- Conclusion : the legacies of spiritual communications -- Afterword : the afterlife of Canada's ghost Summary "Trance Speakers explores the religious and creative practices of trance among female mediums from 1850 to the 1930s. Acknowledging mediumship's popularity among women, it argues that trance speaking participated in the growth of feminist perspectives by providing women with a disguised means to explore and discuss their relation to femininity and authorship. While the study of spiritualism is a burgeoning field, Trance Speakers constitutes the first scholarly work to retrace the history of female mediums in Canada. As such, it sheds new light on women's religious practices in the country, while also providing a greater understanding of the history of spiritualist traditions and travels across North America and Europe. Because most of the mediums travelled to or from the United States and England, their stories also illuminate transnational exchanges of ideas concerning femininity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to presenting many hitherto unexplored archival documents and photographs from Canadian séances, this book of feminist cultural history formulates a new approach to the phenomenon of mediumship that reveals how trance discourses permitted women to resist their marginalization in medical, literary, political, and scientific discourses more broadly. Through feminist and psychoanalytic theories, Trance Speakers proposes a new reading of spiritual mediumship as a response to conflictual interpretations of authorship, agency, and gender."-- Provided by publisher Few people know that Susanna Moodie participated in spiritual séances with her husband, Dunbar, and her sister, Catharine Parr Traill. Moodie, like many other women, found in her communications with the departed an important space to question her commitment to authorship and her understanding of femininity. Retracing the history of possession and mediumship among women following the emergence of spiritualism in mid-nineteenth-century Canada - and unearthing a vast collection of archival documents and photographs from séances - Claudie Massicotte pinpoints spiritualism as a site of conflict and gender struggle and redefines modern understandings of female agency. Trance Speakers offers a new feminist and psychoanalytical approach to the religious and creative practice of trance, arguing that by providing women with a voice for their conscious and unconscious desires, this phenomenon helped them resolve their inner struggles in a society that sought to confine their lives. Drawing attention to the fascinating history of spiritualism and its persistent appeal to women, Massicotte makes a strong case for moving this practice out of the margins of the past.A compelling new reading of spiritual possession as a response to conflicting interpretations of authorship, agency, and gender, Trance Speakers shines a much-needed light on women's religious practices and on the history of spiritualist traditions and travels across North America and Europe Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [201]-262) and index Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on January 13, 2021) Subject Seances -- Canada -- History -- 19th century Seances -- Canada -- History -- 20th century Trance -- Canada -- History -- 19th century Trance -- Canada -- History -- 20th century Women mediums -- Canada -- History -- 19th century Women mediums -- Canada -- History -- 20th century Feminism -- Canada -- History -- 19th century Feminism -- Canada -- History -- 20th century BODY, MIND & SPIRIT -- Parapsychology -- General. DRAMA -- General. Feminism Seances Trance Women mediums Frau Spiritismus Canada Genre/Form Electronic books History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780773549937 0773549935 9780773549944 0773549943 0773549927 9780773549920

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