Determined Spirits : Eugenics, Heredity and Racial Regeneration in Anglo-American Spiritualist Writing, 1848-1930.
- Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
- 1 online resource (241 pages).
- Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture .
- Edinburgh critical studies in Victorian culture. .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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.
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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.
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22573/ctt342pwt JSTOR
1800-1999
Spiritualism--History--Great Britain--19th century. Spiritualism--History--Great Britain--20th century. Spiritualism--History--United States--19th century. Spiritualism--History--United States--20th century. Literature and spiritualism--History--Great Britain--19th century. Literature and spiritualism--History--Great Britain--20th century. Literature and spiritualism--History--United States--19th century. Literature and spiritualism--History--United States--20th century. Great Britain--History--Elizabeth II, 1952---Handbooks, manuals, etc. Literature. History. Philosophy. LITERARY CRITICISM--General. TRAVEL--Special Interest--Literary. LITERARY CRITICISM--European--English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Literature and spiritualism. Spiritualism.