Dig: A History Podcast

Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. Elijah Pierson was the embodiment of early 19th century Christian masculinity. So how did he end up, just a few years later, shambling along the streets of New York City with a scruffy beard, long hair, and dirty fingernails, following a wild eyed prophet? And - perhaps more disturbing - how did he end up at the center of a sensational murder trial? (And we mean literally at the center: he was the dead guy.) If you’re a historian of the United States, you’ve probably already guessed what we’re talking about. And chances are, if you ever had to take an American religious history class, or even an early America or Jacksonian America class, you may have read it. Those of you who haven’t, gee whiz, you’re in for a wild ride. Today, we’re talking about a book that is a true classic in the field of American religious history: Sean Wilentz and Paul Johnson’s 1994 book, The Kingdom of Matthias.

Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org

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Spiritualism Series, #1 of 4. The Fox sister’s story has been told hundreds of times, in autobiography, newspaper stories, biographies, histories of Spiritualism, Victorian entertainment, women’s rights movements, and many other contexts. Today we’re going to share some insights into Maggie and Kate Fox’s life, how their stories have been told, and why the way we tell these kinds of histories matter. For a complete bibliography and a transcript, visit digpodcast.org

Select Bibliography

Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America (1989)

Simone Natalie, Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (Penn State University, 2016)

Barbara Weisberg, Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism

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Spiritualism Series, Episode # 4 of 4. When Ann Braude published her groundbreaking book Radical Spirits in 1989, critics did not like that Braude prominently linked the women’s rights movement, particularly during the antebellum period, with Spiritualism. And even now, thirty years on, many histories still gloss over these important connections. So today we are exploring the close association of Spiritualism and the women’s rights movement of the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Second Edition. Indiana University Press, 2001.

Cox, Robert S. Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism. University of Virginia Press, Reprint 2017. 

Franzen, Trisha. Anna Howard Shaw: The Work of Woman Suffrage. University of Illinois Press, 2014. 

Hewitt, Nancy A. Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 

McGarry, Molly. Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America. University of California Press, 2008. 

Seeman, Erik R. Speaking with the Dead in Early America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

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Spiritualism, Episode #3 of 4. In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Frustrated with what they called “spiritual hucksterism,” members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began protesting - and have never stopped. Who were these ‘plastic shamans,’ and how did the spiritual services they sold become so popular? Listen to find out!

Get the transcript and other resources at digpodcast.org

Bibliography

Irwin, Lee. “Freedom Law, and Prophecy: A Brief History of Native American Religious Resistance,” American Indian Quarterly 21 (Winter 1997): 35-55.

McNally, Michael D. Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Owen, Suzanne. The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011.

Urban, Hugh. New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America. Berkley: University of California Press, 2015.

Bowman, Marion. “Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, Heart Chakra of Planet Earth: The Local and the Global in Glastonbury,” Numen 52 (2005): 157-190.

Amy Wallace, Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda. Berkley: North Atlantic Books, 2013. 

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Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. For three years before his untimely death on the Titanic, British newspaper man W. T. Stead gathered the bereaved and curious in a room in Cambridge House so they could communicate with the dead. Several psychics, including the blind medium Cecil Husk and materialization medium J. B. Jonson, worked these sessions which had become known as Julia’s Bureau. After Stead’s death, Detroit medium Mrs. Etta Wriedt sought to channel the dead newspaper man. Wriedt was also known to channel a Glasgow-born, eighteenth-century apothecary farmer named Dr. John Sharp. Other frequent visitors include an American Indian medicine chief named Grayfeather, the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, and a female Seminole Indian named Blossom who died in the Florida everglades as a young child. But the bureau’s most important spirit visitor can also be said to have been the founder of the bureau, Julia herself. Who was Julia? And how do these seances fit into the long history of Spiritualism? Find out today!

Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org

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Spiritualism Series, #1 of 4. Helen Duncan was charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, but her case was no eighteenth-century sensation: she was arrested, charged, and ultimately imprisoned in 1944. Of course, in 1944, Britain was at war, fighting fascism by day on the continent and hiding in air raid shelters by night at home. The spectacle of a Spiritualist medium on trial for witchcraft seemed out of place. What possessed the Home Secretary to allow this trial to make headlines all across the UK in 1944? That’s what we’re here to find out. Get the full transcript, bibliography, and resources for educators at digpodcast.org

Select Bibliograph

Lisa Morton, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Nina Shandler, The Strange Case of Hellish Nell, (Da Capo Press, 2006)

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford University Press, 1997)

Malcolm Gaskill, Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002)

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This is a special episode researched and written by one of our interns, Olivia Langa.

Intern Episode! #2 of .... To find out more about the everyday lives of women in coal mining families we must look at the songs of less popular female Appalachian singers from the 1930s. One such place to look is in Depression-era Harlan County, located in the southeast corner of Kentucky, situated within a valley between the Pine and Black Mountains on the Kentucky/Virginia border. Most of the folklore that came out of Harlan County tell stories of the horror faced by the miners under the foot of the elite. However, three women, Aunt Molly Jackson, Florence Reece, and Sarah Ogan Gunning, wrote songs in response to the Harlan County upheaval and about the lives of coal mining families. Their work differs from that of the coal mining men because they were not directly involved in coal mining as their occupation. Instead, they occupied spaces within the home and family unit, bearing the responsibility of domesticity. However, with no money, no food, and the constant threat from outside forces, they carried a tremendous burden. Looking at their songs provides a look into their lives as coal miners’ wives and daughters and gives us a look into the devastation they witnessed.

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Animals Series. Episode #4 of 4. The interplay between human and veterinary medicine was incredibly common by the second half of the 19th century. While human medicine and veterinary medicine were distinct professions, they were inextricably linked in the latest experimental turn. Not only were animals involved in the experiments that led to medical breakthroughs, they were crucial to the ethical, and public health policies that shape modern medicine. Today we’re exploring the history of animals and medical science but we'll start at the beginning. 

For transcripts and show notes visit www.digpodcast.org

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Animals Series. Episode #3 of 4. The term “canary in a coal mine” is ubiquitous for any early warning signal. Like our fictional vignette of a miner carrying a canary into the coal mine, canaries were often taken into mines during the first part of the 20th century to test the air for poisonous gasses. The practice was so commonplace that it's become a cliché. Metaphors aside, canaries are a sentinel species, used by humans to detect environmental risks by providing advance warning of a danger. Often animals are used as sentinels because they are more susceptible to environmental hazards that humans may be in the same environment. In the case of coal mining, canaries -- or really any small bird -- are very susceptible to changes in air quality because of their rate of respiration, anatomy, and small size. Contrary to popular belief, canaries in coal mines do not have a very long history. They were only used as sentinel animals in British and American coal mines for roughly 100 years. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a long time at all. Yet, canaries have become ubiquitous with mining in general and as a figure of speech.

Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org

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Animals, Episode #2 of 4. Toads, dogs, cats, ferrets, rats, and occasionally even butterflies were depicted in the 16th and 17th centuries as “witch’s familiars” throughout Europe. A servant of the witches, whose purpose was to help them stir up trouble and cause harm in their enemies, familiars were particularly important in English witch lore. Some were conjured by witches, some sent by the Devil to tempt a woman into maleficence, some were supposed to be the Devil himself in the form of a common black dog. Whatever their origin and intent, familiars were not just background characters in English witch trials. They were presented as evidence and used to sentence hundreds, probably thousands, of people to death for witchcraft - in England. Not so in France or Denmark or Italy. It was only in England that the familiar’s significance was codified in law. Why, you ask? Great question. Let’s find out.

For a complete transcript and bibliography, visit digpodcast.org

Bibliography

Maeve Brigid Callan, The Templars, the Witch, and the Wild Irish (Cornell University Press, 2017)

Alan Dures and Francis Young, English Catholicism, 1558-1642 (Taylor and Francis, 2021)

Elizabeth Ezra, “Becoming Familiar: Witches and Companion Animals in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials,” Children’s Literature, 47 (2019) 175-196

Erica Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes: People and Their Animals in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 2018).

Charlotte Rose Millar, “The Witch’s Familiar in Sixteenth-Century England,” Melbourne Historical Journal 38 (2010) 113-130.

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