1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790235403321

Autore

Ferguson Christine

Titolo

Determined spirits [[electronic resource] ] : eugenics, heredity and racial regeneration in Anglo-American spiritualist writing, 1848-1930 / / Christine Ferguson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Edinburgh, : Edinburgh University Press, c2012

ISBN

0-7486-5066-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (241 p.)

Collana

Edinburgh critical studies in Victorian culture

Disciplina

133.9094109034

800

942.08

Soggetti

Spiritualism - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Spiritualism - Great Britain - History - 20th century

Spiritualism - United States - History - 19th century

Spiritualism - United States - History - 20th century

Literature and spiritualism - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Literature and spiritualism - Great Britain - History - 20th century

Literature and spiritualism - United States - History - 19th century

Literature and spiritualism - United States - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Copyright; Contents; Illustrations; Series Editor's Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter 1 Radical Determinism and the Natural History of the Medium; Chapter 2 Spirits in Mind: Madness, Idiocy and the Cultural Capital of Ignorance; Chapter 3 Eugenic Summerlands: Sexual Reproduction and Family Engineering in the Spheres; Chapter 4 Blended Souls: Paschal Beverly Randolph and Occult Miscegenation; Chapter 5 Criminal Man and Recidivist Spirit: Spiritualism, Criminal Anthropology and Thanato-Rehabilitationism

Chapter 6 Dead Letters: Bioaesthetics and the New Realism in Fin-de-Siècle SpiritualismConclusion; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Examines the Spiritualist movement's role in disseminating eugenic and hard hereditarian thought.Studying transatlantic spiritualist literature



from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, Christine Ferguson focuses on its incorporation and dissemination of bio-determinist and eugenic thought. She asks why ideas about rational reproduction, hereditary determinism and race improvement became so important to spiritualist novelists, journalists and biographers in this period. She also examines how these concerns drove emerging Spiritualist understandings of disability, intelligence, crime, concep