Efram Sera-Shriar is a historical anthropologist who specializes in Victorian science. He is associate professor in English studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he teaches the history and culture of the English-speaking world. Sera-Shriar is the author of Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age and The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871 and senior editor for The Correspondence of John Tyndallseries.

An engaging and diligently researched book exploring the hitherto understudied relationship between the development of Victorian anthropology and nineteenth-century spiritualism. Sera-Shriar’s book speaks to issues that hauntingly resonate with our own contemporary concerns: the questioning of expertise, the contestation of authority, the reliability of observers and evidence, and completely contradictory readings of the same data. Ultimately this is an intriguing study of anthropology’s role in bolstering and unsettling notions of authority, evidence, and the credibility of both observer and observed in the séance room.

Efram Sera-Shriar is a historical anthropologist who specializes in Victorian science. He is associate professor in English studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he teaches the history and culture of the English-speaking world. Sera-Shriar is the author of Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age and The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871 and senior editor for The Correspondence of John Tyndallseries.

An engaging and diligently researched book exploring the hitherto understudied relationship between the development of Victorian anthropology and nineteenth-century spiritualism. Sera-Shriar’s book speaks to issues that hauntingly resonate with our own contemporary concerns: the questioning of expertise, the contestation of authority, the reliability of observers and evidence, and completely contradictory readings of the same data. Ultimately this is an intriguing study of anthropology’s role in bolstering and unsettling notions of authority, evidence, and the credibility of both observer and observed in the séance room.

Efram Sera-Shriar is a historical anthropologist who specializes in Victorian science. He is associate professor in English studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he teaches the history and culture of the English-speaking world. Sera-Shriar is the author of Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age and The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871 and senior editor for The Correspondence of John Tyndallseries.

An engaging and diligently researched book exploring the hitherto understudied relationship between the development of Victorian anthropology and nineteenth-century spiritualism. Sera-Shriar’s book speaks to issues that hauntingly resonate with our own contemporary concerns: the questioning of expertise, the contestation of authority, the reliability of observers and evidence, and completely contradictory readings of the same data. Ultimately this is an intriguing study of anthropology’s role in bolstering and unsettling notions of authority, evidence, and the credibility of both observer and observed in the séance room.