Science et spiritisme

Science and Spiritualism, 1750-1930

Conference

Leeds Trinity University

Thursday 30 and Friday 31 May 2019.

Since the emergence of modern mediumship in the middle of the nineteenth century, science and spiritualism have been interwoven. Sceptics and believers alike have investigated spirit and psychic phenomena to determine its legitimacy.

This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the history of the intersection of science and spiritualism during the long nineteenth century.

Thursday 30 May

9.00 – 9.30am
Registration and refreshments

9.30 – 10.45am
Session 1A

Anaïs Aledo – Liminality and the Unconscious in Arthur Machen's Use of the Transcendent Doctor Figure

Andreas Sommer – Scientific Naturalism and the Study of Spiritualist Phenomena by Positivist and Materialist Representatives in Science and Medicine

Béatrice Laurent – Spiritualism vs. 'Exact Science in the Work of James John Garth Wilkinson

or

Session 1B

Bill Jenkins – The Physiology of the Haunted Mind: Naturalistic Theories of Apparitions in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Clare Button – "The Higher Fundamental Rhythms": Margaret Morris, a Spiritualist Physiotherapist

Renaud Evrard – Experimental Spiritualism and Psychology in France between 1848 and 1878: The Itinerary of Timothée Puel

10.50am – 12.05pm
Session 2A

Eleanor Dobson – The Picture of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde, Spirit Photography and Occulture

Anthony Enns – Gothic Media

Barbara Vrachnas – Science and Spiritualism in Margaret Oliphant's 'Stories of the Seen and Unseen'

or

Session 2B

Annette Müllberger – Spiritualists in Barcelona and their Social Reform Project

Julia Falk - The Terra Incognita of the Soul, Spiritualism in Sweden 1891-1922

Julia Gyimesi – Spiritualism and its Oppenents in Hungary

12.10 – 1.00pm Séance: A view from through the veil with Nik Taylor

1.00 - 2.00pm Lunch

2.00 – 3.15pm
Session 3A

Eilis Phillips & Karl Bell – 'There is Nothing Certain': Science and Spiritualism, 1914-1924

Haley Flyn – Spiritualism and Dreams in Periodical Literature of the 1860s

Merrick Burrow – Ecology Catastrophe and the Scientific-Spiritualist Nexus in Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger Stories

or

Session 3B

Efram Sera-Shriar – Grumbling at the Folklore Society: Edward Clodd, Andrew Lang and The Problem of Psychical Research

Elsa Richardson – Lentil Soup Beyond the Veil: Spiritualism, Vegetarianism and Dietetics

Shane McCorristine – Science, Geography, and the Spirits: Arctic Explorers and Shamanism

3.20 – 3.55pm Refreshment break

4.00 – 5.15pm
Session 4A

Taylor Tomko - Popular Poison: Pastiche and the Rhetorics of Influence in William Somerset 

Maugham's 'The Magician' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Grey'

Jodie Marley - 'The Philosophic Voices': W.B. Yeat's Spiritualist Experiments and the Formation of 'A Vision'

Kazuki Inoue - Scientific and Spirit 'Medium' in T.S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'

or

Session 4B

Andrew Lenoir – Channelling The New Era: John Murray Spear's Mechanical Messiah and the Divine Social State on Earth

Claudia Abreu & T Camel – The Fall of Spiritism, The French Spiritualist Movement

​John M. Andrick - Prophetess of a Glorious Future: Lillian Whiting and the Progressive Science of Spiritualist Evolution 1893 - 1919

or

Session 4C
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Kaat Wils – Magnetizers, Spiritualism, and the Science of Hypnosis in Late Nineteenth Century Belgium and France

L. Anne Delgado – Death-Defying Acts: Mina Crandon and the 'Sister Art Magic'

Ross Macfarlane - Taken from the Genuine and Original Record: Spiritualism and Information Science

5.15 – 6.00pm Wine Reception


6.15 – 7.15pm Keynote speaker – Christine Ferguson 'Anna Kingsford and the Intuitive Science of Occultism'

Friday 31 May

9.00 – 9.30am Registration and refreshments

9.45 – 11.00am
Session 5A

Aren Roukema – Mediumship at Hyper-Speed: Spiritualism and Science Fiction

Muhamet Alijaj – Epistemology, Experiment and Testimony Inside and Outside the Text: The Report of the London Dialectical Society

Daniel Albert Joslyn – Heterodox Sexology: Sexual Mysticism as Popular Sexology in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States

or

Session 5B

Nik Taylor and Andy Cooper – Spiritualists and Magicians: Outrage, Appropriation and the Birth of a Performance Genre

Paula John – Science, Mediums and Charlatans

Evelien Jonckheere & Kurt Vanhoutte – Metempsychosis in the Fairgrounds: The Migration of a Ghost

11.15 – 12.30pm
Session 6A

Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott – Dragging the Davenports: Magic's Co-Option of the Séance

Robert Dickins – 'I Am Not a Machine!': Automatism, Domesticity and Spiritual Writing in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Susan B. Barnes – The Davenport Brothers' Mediumship: Scientific Fact or Magical Fiction

or

Session 6B

Jane Ford – 'Un-Decodeable Wireless Signals': Telepathy in Lucas Malet's 'The Survivors' (1923)

Kitt price – Frederic Myers and 'Human Personality'

Pat Beesley – There is No Death: Florence Marryat's Spirit Encounters and Science of the Mind

12.30 – 1.30pm Lunch

1.45 – 3.00pm
Session 7A

Camilo Garzón – The Invention of a Spirit's Science: Rhetoric, Places of Production, and Inscriptions of an 'Ungraspable' Scientific Object, 1857-1860

Ellen Packham – Contesting Boundaries: William Gregory and the Limits of 'Established Science' in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.

Rebecca Sheppard – Pathologized Victim or Self-Realised Subject? Mesmerism in George Du Maurier's 'Trilby' and W. Somerset Maugham's 'Magician'

or

Session 7B

Emma Merkling – Evelyn De Morgan and 'The Unseen Universe': Material Death, Eternal Life, and Victorian Thermodynamics

James Mussell – Binding and Embodiment: Oliver Lodge, Physics, and the Book

Havelok Symes – Representing the Ether: Oliver Lodge and the Fight Against Instrumentalism

3.15 – 3.45pm Refreshments break

4.00 – 5.15pm
Session 8A

Rosemary Mitchell – Catholic Priests and Spiritualism

Suzy Anger – Western Buddhism and the Victorian Sciences of the Mind: Lafcadio Hearn's Meditations

Susan Leybourne – Darkness, Visionary Experiences and the Nineteenth Century Séance

or

Session 8B

Serena Keshavjee – T.G. Hamilton & Spirit Photographs

Shannon Taggart – Scientists as Spirit Guides: Communications with Tesla, Einstein and Edison in Contemporary Spiritualism

Karolina Maria Hess – Photography and Radiation in Mediumistic Experiments by Julian Ochorowicz

or

Session 8C

Tetsuya Kumagai – The Influence of German Spiritualism on Modern Japanese Philosophy: Raphael von Koeber at Tokyo Imperial University

Sophie Allen - Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism in Birmingham and Mrs Groom: Intellectual or Feeble-Minded?

5.30 – 6.30pm Keynote Speaker – Roger Luckhurst 'Stanhope Speer and the Ghost Club Circle: Questions and Methods'

6.30pm Conference close