“A convincing account of science’s flirtation with the marginal and the marvelous” from the author of Conjuring Science (Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences). Séances were wildly popular in France between 1850 and 1930, when members of the general public and scholars alike turned to the wondrous as a means of understanding and explaining the world. Sofie Lachapelle explores how five distinct groups attempted to use and legitimize séances: spiritists, who tried to create a new “science” concerned with the spiritual realm and the afterlife; occultists, who hoped to connect ancient revelations with contemporary science; physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists, who developed a pathology of supernatural experiences; psychical researchers, who drew on the unexplained experiences of the public to create a new field of research; and metapsychists, who attempted to develop a new science of yet-to-be understood natural forces. An enlightening and entertaining narrative that includes colorful people like “Allan Kardec”—a pseudonymous former mathematics teacher from Lyon who wrote successful works on the science of the séance and what happened after death—Investigating the Supernatural reveals the rich and vibrant diversity of unorthodox beliefs and practices that existed at the borders of the French scientific culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “What is science? . . . In her engaging book, Sophie Lachapelle probes for an answer by looking at the liminal realm between science and superstition and the attempt to render the supernatural explicable in naturalistic terms.” —Isis “A welcome addition to the growing literature on spiritism, occultism and physical research in modern France.” —French History

A study of the public fascination with spiritualism and psychical research in Victorian and Edwardian times.

Beginning with the Pre-Raphaelites and those pivotal French artists (de Chavannes, Moreau, Redon and others) who assured the transition from romanticism to symbolism, this magnificent (and splendidly color-illustrated) work turns to examine Gauguin's contribution to the spread of symbolism, an inter

Engaging, sophisticated, and witty, French-born artist James Joseph Tissot (1836-1902) painted for many years in London before returning to Paris in the 1880s. His works not only document contemporary fashion, manners, and mores, but also the paradoxes and anxieties of his age. In this book, ten contributors approach Tissot and his art from a variety of theoretical positions and disciplines to arrive at fresh and often startling insights. Looking both at and beneath Tissot’s seductive surfaces, the authors attempt to identify and decode the artist’s subtexts - issues of gender, class, and such ancillary topics as voyeurism, exhibitionism, fetishism, kitsch, and spiritualism.

Secular Spirituality challenges the traditional dichotomy between Enlightenment reason and religion. It follows French romantic socialists' and spiritists' search for a new spirituality based on reincarnation as a path to progress for individuals and society. Leaders like Allan Kardec argued for social reform; spiritist groups strove for equality; and women mediums challenged gender roles. Lynn L. Sharp looks closely at what it meant to practice spiritism, analyszing the movement's social and political critique and explaining the popularity of the new belief. She explores points of convergence and conflict in the interplay between spiritism and science, spiritism and psychology, and spiritism and the Catholic church to argue that the nineteenth century was not as 'disenchanted' as has been thought. Secular Spirituality successfully places spiritism within a larger cultural conversation, going beyond the leaders of the movement to look at the way spiritism functioned for its followers.