Author: Kathryn Troy
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438466099
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism. The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native American spirit guides during the emergent years of American Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.
The Specter of the Indian
Author: Kathryn Troy
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438466099
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism. The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native American spirit guides during the emergent years of American Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438466099
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism. The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native American spirit guides during the emergent years of American Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.
The Specter of the Indian
Author: Kathryn Troy
Publisher: Suny Press
ISBN: 9781438466088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism.
Publisher: Suny Press
ISBN: 9781438466088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism.
The National Uncanny
Author: Rene L. Bergland
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
ISBN: 161168871X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Although spectral Indians appear with startling frequency in US literary works, until now the implications of describing them as ghosts have not been thoroughly investigated. In the first years of nationhood, Philip Freneau and Sarah Wentworth Morton peopled their works with Indian phantoms, as did Charles Brocken Brown, Washington Irving, Samuel Woodworth, Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, William Apess, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others who followed. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Native American ghosts figured prominently in speeches attributed to Chief Seattle, Black Elk, and Kicking Bear. Today, Stephen King and Leslie Marmon Silko plot best-selling novels around ghostly Indians and haunted Indian burial grounds. Rene L. Bergland argues that representing Indians as ghosts internalizes them as ghostly figures within the white imagination. Spectralization allows white Americans to construct a concept of American nationhood haunted by Native Americans, in which Indians become sharers in an idealized national imagination. However, the problems of spectralization are clear, since the discourse questions the very nationalism it constructs. Indians who are transformed into ghosts cannot be buried or evaded, and the specter of their forced disappearance haunts the American imagination. Indian ghosts personify national guilt and horror, as well as national pride and pleasure. Bergland tells the story of a terrifying and triumphant American aesthetic that repeatedly transforms horror into glory, national dishonor into national pride.
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
ISBN: 161168871X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Although spectral Indians appear with startling frequency in US literary works, until now the implications of describing them as ghosts have not been thoroughly investigated. In the first years of nationhood, Philip Freneau and Sarah Wentworth Morton peopled their works with Indian phantoms, as did Charles Brocken Brown, Washington Irving, Samuel Woodworth, Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, William Apess, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others who followed. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Native American ghosts figured prominently in speeches attributed to Chief Seattle, Black Elk, and Kicking Bear. Today, Stephen King and Leslie Marmon Silko plot best-selling novels around ghostly Indians and haunted Indian burial grounds. Rene L. Bergland argues that representing Indians as ghosts internalizes them as ghostly figures within the white imagination. Spectralization allows white Americans to construct a concept of American nationhood haunted by Native Americans, in which Indians become sharers in an idealized national imagination. However, the problems of spectralization are clear, since the discourse questions the very nationalism it constructs. Indians who are transformed into ghosts cannot be buried or evaded, and the specter of their forced disappearance haunts the American imagination. Indian ghosts personify national guilt and horror, as well as national pride and pleasure. Bergland tells the story of a terrifying and triumphant American aesthetic that repeatedly transforms horror into glory, national dishonor into national pride.
Authorized Agents
Author: Frank Kelderman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438476191
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
In the nineteenth century, Native American writing and oratory extended a long tradition of diplomacy between indigenous people and settler states. As the crisis of forced removal profoundly reshaped Indian country between 1820 and 1860, tribal leaders and intellectuals worked with coauthors, interpreters, and amanuenses to address the impact of American imperialism on Indian nations. These collaborative publication projects operated through institutions of Indian diplomacy, but also intervened in them to contest colonial ideas about empire, the frontier, and nationalism. In this book, Frank Kelderman traces this literary history in the heart of the continent, from the Great Lakes to the Upper Missouri River Valley. Because their writings often were edited and published by colonial institutions, many early Native American writers have long been misread, discredited, or simply ignored. Authorized Agents demonstrates why their works should not be dismissed as simply extending the discourses of government agencies or religious organizations. Through analyses of a range of texts, including oratory, newspapers, autobiographies, petitions, and government papers, Kelderman offers an interdisciplinary method for examining how Native authors claimed a place in public discourse, and how the conventions of Indian diplomacy shaped their texts.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438476191
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
In the nineteenth century, Native American writing and oratory extended a long tradition of diplomacy between indigenous people and settler states. As the crisis of forced removal profoundly reshaped Indian country between 1820 and 1860, tribal leaders and intellectuals worked with coauthors, interpreters, and amanuenses to address the impact of American imperialism on Indian nations. These collaborative publication projects operated through institutions of Indian diplomacy, but also intervened in them to contest colonial ideas about empire, the frontier, and nationalism. In this book, Frank Kelderman traces this literary history in the heart of the continent, from the Great Lakes to the Upper Missouri River Valley. Because their writings often were edited and published by colonial institutions, many early Native American writers have long been misread, discredited, or simply ignored. Authorized Agents demonstrates why their works should not be dismissed as simply extending the discourses of government agencies or religious organizations. Through analyses of a range of texts, including oratory, newspapers, autobiographies, petitions, and government papers, Kelderman offers an interdisciplinary method for examining how Native authors claimed a place in public discourse, and how the conventions of Indian diplomacy shaped their texts.
Religion and the Specter of the West
Author: Arvind-Pal S. Mandair
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231147244
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 537
Book Description
Arguing that intellectual movements, such as deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology, have different implications for cultures and societies that live with the debilitating effects of past imperialisms, Arvind Mandair unsettles the politics of knowledge construction in which the category of "religion" continues to be central. Through a case study of Sikhism, he launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal. At the same time, he presents a portrait of how certain aspects of Sikh tradition were reinvented as "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. India's imperial elite subtly recast Sikh tradition as a sui generis religion, which robbed its teachings of their political force. In turn, Sikhs began to define themselves as a "nation" and a "world religion" that was separate from, but parallel to, the rise of the Indian state and global Hinduism. Rather than investigate these processes in isolation from Europe, Mandair shifts the focus closer to the political history of ideas, thereby recovering part of Europe's repressed colonial memory. Mandair rethinks the intersection of religion and the secular in discourses such as history of religions, postcolonial theory, and recent continental philosophy. Though seemingly unconnected, these discourses are shown to be linked to a philosophy of "generalized translation" that emerged as a key conceptual matrix in the colonial encounter between India and the West. In this riveting study, Mandair demonstrates how this philosophy of translation continues to influence the repetitions of religion and identity politics in the lives of South Asians, and the way the academy, state, and media have analyzed such phenomena.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231147244
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 537
Book Description
Arguing that intellectual movements, such as deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology, have different implications for cultures and societies that live with the debilitating effects of past imperialisms, Arvind Mandair unsettles the politics of knowledge construction in which the category of "religion" continues to be central. Through a case study of Sikhism, he launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal. At the same time, he presents a portrait of how certain aspects of Sikh tradition were reinvented as "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. India's imperial elite subtly recast Sikh tradition as a sui generis religion, which robbed its teachings of their political force. In turn, Sikhs began to define themselves as a "nation" and a "world religion" that was separate from, but parallel to, the rise of the Indian state and global Hinduism. Rather than investigate these processes in isolation from Europe, Mandair shifts the focus closer to the political history of ideas, thereby recovering part of Europe's repressed colonial memory. Mandair rethinks the intersection of religion and the secular in discourses such as history of religions, postcolonial theory, and recent continental philosophy. Though seemingly unconnected, these discourses are shown to be linked to a philosophy of "generalized translation" that emerged as a key conceptual matrix in the colonial encounter between India and the West. In this riveting study, Mandair demonstrates how this philosophy of translation continues to influence the repetitions of religion and identity politics in the lives of South Asians, and the way the academy, state, and media have analyzed such phenomena.
Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital
Author: Vivek Chibber
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844679764
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalizing categories of the Enlightenment. In this devastating critique, mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory. Focusing on the hugely popular Subaltern Studies project, Chibber shows that its foundational arguments are based on a series of analytical and historical misapprehensions. He demonstrates that it is possible to affirm a universalizing theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital promises to be a historical milestone in contemporary social theory.
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844679764
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Postcolonial theory has become enormously influential as a framework for understanding the Global South. It is also a school of thought popular because of its rejection of the supposedly universalizing categories of the Enlightenment. In this devastating critique, mounted on behalf of the radical Enlightenment tradition, Vivek Chibber offers the most comprehensive response yet to postcolonial theory. Focusing on the hugely popular Subaltern Studies project, Chibber shows that its foundational arguments are based on a series of analytical and historical misapprehensions. He demonstrates that it is possible to affirm a universalizing theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital promises to be a historical milestone in contemporary social theory.
The Specter of Sex
Author: Sally Kitch
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9781438427546
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Genealogy of the formation of race and gender hierarchies in the U.S.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9781438427546
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Genealogy of the formation of race and gender hierarchies in the U.S.
The Dance of Person and Place
Author: Thomas M. Norton-Smith
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438431333
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187
Book Description
Uses the concept of world-making to provide an introduction to American Indian philosophy. Ever since first contact with Europeans, American Indian stories about how the world is have been regarded as interesting objects of study, but also as childish and savage, philosophically curious and ethically monstrous. Using the writings of early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists, early narratives told or written by Indians, and scholarly work by contemporary Native writers and philosophers, Shawnee philosopher Thomas M. Norton-Smith develops a rational reconstruction of American Indian philosophy as a dance of person and place. He views Native philosophy through the lens of a culturally sophisticated constructivism grounded in the work of contemporary American analytic philosopher Nelson Goodman, in which descriptions of the world (or world versions) satisfying certain criteria construct actual worldswords make worlds. Ultimately, Norton-Smith argues that the Native ways of organizing experiences with spoken words and other performances construct real worlds as robustly as their Western counterparts, and, in so doing, he helps to bridge the chasm between Western and American Indian philosophical traditions. a deft and self-aware exemplification of the task of cross-cultural comparison The writing is accessible and shows a deft and helpful interplay between abstract language and concrete illustrative material. The Pluralist Norton-Smith does a good job illustrating how worlds are created through language and how language itself contains philosophy. H-Net Reviews (H-Environment) Norton-Smith offers an insightful discussion of Native American epistemological concepts This book is an excellent exercise for all philosophy students as an expansion of worldviews and an examination of Western epistemological foundations and biases. It also offers an insightful discussion of indigenous philosophy for both philosophy and indigenous scholars Highly recommended. ? CHOICE The author opens a unique and exciting avenue for philosophical discourse by demonstrating a method of inquiry that provides a new way of interpreting Native thinking, a method that not only promotes Native philosophical systems but allows for greater communication between Western and Native philosophers. Lorraine Mayer, author of Cries from a Métis Heart Challenging and provocative, this book is a great step forward in the conversation of academic Indigenous philosophy. Brian Yazzie Burkhart, Pitzer College
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438431333
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187
Book Description
Uses the concept of world-making to provide an introduction to American Indian philosophy. Ever since first contact with Europeans, American Indian stories about how the world is have been regarded as interesting objects of study, but also as childish and savage, philosophically curious and ethically monstrous. Using the writings of early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists, early narratives told or written by Indians, and scholarly work by contemporary Native writers and philosophers, Shawnee philosopher Thomas M. Norton-Smith develops a rational reconstruction of American Indian philosophy as a dance of person and place. He views Native philosophy through the lens of a culturally sophisticated constructivism grounded in the work of contemporary American analytic philosopher Nelson Goodman, in which descriptions of the world (or world versions) satisfying certain criteria construct actual worldswords make worlds. Ultimately, Norton-Smith argues that the Native ways of organizing experiences with spoken words and other performances construct real worlds as robustly as their Western counterparts, and, in so doing, he helps to bridge the chasm between Western and American Indian philosophical traditions. a deft and self-aware exemplification of the task of cross-cultural comparison The writing is accessible and shows a deft and helpful interplay between abstract language and concrete illustrative material. The Pluralist Norton-Smith does a good job illustrating how worlds are created through language and how language itself contains philosophy. H-Net Reviews (H-Environment) Norton-Smith offers an insightful discussion of Native American epistemological concepts This book is an excellent exercise for all philosophy students as an expansion of worldviews and an examination of Western epistemological foundations and biases. It also offers an insightful discussion of indigenous philosophy for both philosophy and indigenous scholars Highly recommended. ? CHOICE The author opens a unique and exciting avenue for philosophical discourse by demonstrating a method of inquiry that provides a new way of interpreting Native thinking, a method that not only promotes Native philosophical systems but allows for greater communication between Western and Native philosophers. Lorraine Mayer, author of Cries from a Métis Heart Challenging and provocative, this book is a great step forward in the conversation of academic Indigenous philosophy. Brian Yazzie Burkhart, Pitzer College
Altered States
Author: Marlene Tromp
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791467404
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Considers the role of Spiritualism in Victorian culture.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791467404
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Considers the role of Spiritualism in Victorian culture.
Invisible Hosts
Author: Elizabeth Schleber Lowry
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438465998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Provides a rhetorical analysis of female spirit mediums autobiographies in the historical and social contexts of Victorian-era America. Invisible Hosts explores how the central tenets of Spiritualism influenced ways in which women conceived of their bodies and their civic responsibilities, arguing that Spiritualist ideologies helped to lay the foundation for the social and political advances made by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As public figures, female spirit mediums of the Victorian era were often accused of unfeminine (and therefore transgressive) behavior. A rhetorical analysis of nineteenth-century spirit mediums autobiographies reveals how these women convinced readers of their authenticity both as respectable women and as psychics. The author argues that these womens autobiographies reflect an attempt to emulate feminine virtues even as their interpretation and performance of these virtues helped to transform prevailing gender stereotypes. She demonstrates that the social performance central to the production of womens autobiography is uniquely complicated by Spiritualist ideology. Such complications reveal new information about how women represented themselves, gained agency, and renegotiated nineteenth-century gender roles.
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438465998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Provides a rhetorical analysis of female spirit mediums autobiographies in the historical and social contexts of Victorian-era America. Invisible Hosts explores how the central tenets of Spiritualism influenced ways in which women conceived of their bodies and their civic responsibilities, arguing that Spiritualist ideologies helped to lay the foundation for the social and political advances made by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As public figures, female spirit mediums of the Victorian era were often accused of unfeminine (and therefore transgressive) behavior. A rhetorical analysis of nineteenth-century spirit mediums autobiographies reveals how these women convinced readers of their authenticity both as respectable women and as psychics. The author argues that these womens autobiographies reflect an attempt to emulate feminine virtues even as their interpretation and performance of these virtues helped to transform prevailing gender stereotypes. She demonstrates that the social performance central to the production of womens autobiography is uniquely complicated by Spiritualist ideology. Such complications reveal new information about how women represented themselves, gained agency, and renegotiated nineteenth-century gender roles.