Surprise Series. Episode #2 of 4. There was once a young, deaf Black man, and I’m not going to tell you his real name because those records are private, so we’ll just call him Levi. Levi lived on a farm in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. According to his patient case file, he was incarcerated at the Matteawan State Hospital because he murdered his white “master” in 1870. A quick google search - let’s face it, that’s often our first research step! - on Levi brought me to an index on Deaf Americans maintained by Gallaudet University that claimed that he was an enslaved farm worker who killed his white master, David Hasbrouck. On this episode, we won’t be talking about Levi’s murder case and all the issues it raised - you’ll have to read my future article for more on that. But instead, we’ll learn more about one of the things that made his murderous act possible. Today, we’re talking about the history of poor relief and child welfare in the United States.

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

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Guess the Theme Series, #1 of 4. Tea, it turns out, is a bottomless commodity history. As historian Erika Rappaport notes, at various times over the last two thousands years, “In Asia, the Near East, Europe, and North America, tea was a powerful medicine, a dangerous drug, a religious and artistic practice, a status symbol, an aspect of urban leisure, and a sign of respectability and virtue.” As a product of empire, cultural exchange, medicinal application, immense profitability, social imagination, and agricultural innovation, the history of tea is also the history of millions of intersecting individual lives. Some, like Catherine of Braganza, were elite women who made tea-drinking fashionable in 17th century Britain. Some, like Mary Tuke of England, were entrepreneurs who built a business and reputation on the products of the 18th century imperial markets. And yet others, like Anandaram Dhekial Phukan of Assam, were hopeful subjects of British imperialism who believed the 19th century empire could improve the lives of his people. The British thirst for tea altered economies and ecologies, started wars, underwrote individual fortunes and spectacular falls from grace. The simplicity and ubiquitousness of tea in British culture today belies its deep history. Today we’re going to spill a little tea, and see what we find out.

Select Bibliography

Markman Ellis, Richard Coulton, Matthew Mauger, Empire of Tea : The Asian Leaf That Conquered the World (London : Reaktion Books, 2015)

Erika Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press; 2017)

Jayeeta Sharma, Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Duke University press, 2011)

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Spiritualism Series. Episode #4 of 4. You might think that the story of Pharaoh Sety I of Egypt's 19th Dynasty ends with his death. But you’d be wrong, at least according to one 20th-century British woman, Dorothy Eady. Dorothy, who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Sety's lover Bentreshyt, is the only reason we know about this story at all. Dorothy Eady’s past life, which she discovered piecemeal over time, became her obsession. It shaped everything about her. She spent the first half of her life searching for her spiritual home, Abydos, and the second half making amends for Bentrshyt’s sin. Perhaps most shockingly, Dorothy, now called Omm Sety, would resume Bentreshyt’s sexual love affair with King Sety 3200 years after their deaths! More on that in a bit. Today we’re using the story of Omm Sety as a gateway into the history of past lives in Britain and America.

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

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Spiritualism Series. Episode #2 of 4. The years 1896-1910 of the American woman’s suffrage movement are sometimes referred to as the doldrums because of an apparent lack of progress during the years. However, revised scholarship has shown that these were in fact the years where a lot of uncelebrated work was done for the cause. Today we will focus on the life of Anna Howard Shaw, who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1904-1915. Shaw oversaw the transition of NAWSA from a volunteer-based organization to a professional entity with headquarters in New York City and a paid staff.

You'll find show notes and a transcript at digpodcast.org

Bibliography

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

Ellen Carol DuBois, Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote (Simon & Schuster, 2021).

Wendy L. Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement (NYU Press, 2022). 

Anna Howard Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer (New York: Kraus Reprint Co, 1970).

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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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