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The Other World
A study of the public fascination with spiritualism and psychical research in Victorian and Edwardian times.
"Shattered Nerves"
An examination of pre-Freudian psychiatric developments illustrated with biographical sketches of doctors and patients alike. The text attempts to place a puzzling medical problem in its full social, cultural and intellectual context.
Spectres of the Self
Examines the culture of ghost-seeing, arguing that the ghost represents a symbol of the psychological hauntedness of modern experience.
The Darkened Room
A highly original study that examines the central role played by women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian era, The Darkened Room is more than a meditation on women mediums—it's an exploration of the era's gender relations. The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead, offered female mediums a new independence, authority, and potential to undermine conventional class and gender relations in the home and in society. Using previously unexamined sources and an innovative approach, Alex Owen invokes the Victorian world of darkened séance rooms, theatrical apparitions, and moving episodes of happiness lost and regained. She charts the struggles between spiritualists and the medical and legal establishments over the issue of female mediumship, and provides new insights into the gendered dynamics of Victorian society.
Cultures of Neurasthenia
Neurasthenia, meaning nerve weakness, was ‘invented’ in the United States as a disorder of modernity, caused by the fast pace of urban life. Soon after, from the early 1880s onwards, this modern disease crossed the Atlantic. Neurasthenia became much less ‘popular’ in Britain or the Netherlands than in Germany. Neurasthenia’s heyday continued into the first decade of the twentieth century. The label referred to conditions similar to those currently labelled as chronic fatigue syndrome. Why this rise and fall of neurasthenia, and why these differences in popularity This book, which emerged out of an Anglo-Dutch-German conference held in June 2000, explores neurasthenia’s many-sided history from a comparative perspective.
The Root of All Evil
None
Horror Stories
Human beings are the only species to have evolved the trait of emotional crying. We weep at tragedies in our lives and in those of others - remarkably even when they are fictional characters in film, opera, music, novels, and theatre. Why have we developed art forms - most powerfully, music - which move us to sadness and tears? This question forms the backdrop to Michael Trimble's discussion of emotional crying, its physiology, and its evolutionary implications. His exploration examines the connections with other distinctively human features: the development of language, self-consciousness, religious practices, and empathy. Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the brain have uncovered unique human characteristics; mirror neurones, for example, explain why we unconsciously imitate actions and behaviour. Whereas Nietzsche argued that artistic tragedy was born with the ancient Greeks, Trimble places its origins far earlier. His neurophysiological and evolutionary insights shed fascinating light onto this enigmatic part of our humanity.
Modern Spiritualism and the Church of England, 1850-1939
Shows how some of the ideas about the afterlife presented by spiritualism helped to shape popular Christianity in the period.
Cultural Policy Review of Books
Cultures are shaped by many institutions and agencies, including governments, corporations, education and the media. In recent years, research into these culture-shaping activities has been increasingly associated with the developing field of cultural policy studies. The Cultural Policy Review of Books offers a fascinating insight into the intellectual formation of many of the leading figures that have contributed to this field. Invited to write a short review essay on the book that had most influenced their thinking, 41 academics and researchers from around the world reveal what they consider to be essential reading. Including essays on Bourdieu, de Certeau, Foucault, Gramsci, Habermas, and Williams, as well as many lesser known writers, the collection throws new light on the intellectual underpinning of cultural policy studies. It will be of interest not only to researchers, students and teachers in this field, but to all those looking to understand the forces that shape the culture of modern societies.
