Radical Spirits, Second Edition: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America / Edition 2

by Ann Braude

Overview

". . . Ann Braude still speaks powerfully to unique issues of women's creativity-spiritual as well as political-in a superb account of the controversial nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement." —Jon Butler

"Radical Spirits is a vitally important book . . . [that] has . . . influenced a generation of young scholars." —Marie Griffith

In Radical Spirits, Ann Braude contends that the early women's rights movement and Spiritualism went hand in hand. Her book makes a convincing argument for the importance of religion in the study of American women's history.

In this new edition, Braude discusses the impact of the book on the scholarship of the last decade and assesses the place of religion in interpretations of women's history in general and the women's rights movement in particular. A review of current scholarship and suggestions for further reading make it even more useful for contemporary teachers and students.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253215024
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	11/19/2001
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	743,312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.92(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ann Braude teaches at the Harvard Divinity School and is co-editor of Roots of Bitterness: Documents in the Social History of American Women.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. "Unbroken Communication between the Infinite and All Beings"
2. "The Blessedness of Sinless Childhood in the World Beyond"
3. "Thine for Agitation"
4. The Meaning of Mediumship
5. "The Body and Soul Destroying Marriage Institution"
6. Mediums versus Medical men
7. "No Organization Can Hold Me"
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

According to Braude, many 19th-century women allayed fears of death through spiritualist beliefs; the comfort that spiritualism brought increased their confidence, allowing them to support women's rights and advance an array of causes from the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage and marriage reform. no pw review (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Braude explores America's spiritualist movement in the context of 19th-century social, denominational, and political history. Spiritualism claimed, through contact with the dead, to be a scientific investigation into the immortality of the soul. The movement was associated with free speech and the abolition of slavery. Because it maintained that divine truth was accessible to any individual, female or male, and thus was accessible outside the male hierarchies of family, church, and politics, it became associated with feminism as well; many early women leaders in all three movements were also spiritualists. A fascinating, well-researched, and scholarly work on a peripheral aspect of the rise of the American feminist movement.-- Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.

Library Journal