Haunted Heritage

Currently a full-time Lecturer and SAGES Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, Michele Hanks received her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests and experiences have centered on tourism, the production of knowledge, and cultural politics. She has been fascinated by how forms of knowledge or interpretations of the past become authoritative in the past and present. Her dissertation research centered on the production and circulation of paranormal knowledge in England. During 2006-2009, she conducted ethnographic research with ghost hunters, ghost tour guides, and other paranormal researchers in England to learn about the processes of producing and sharing new knowledge of the ghostly. She has presented numerous papers on this research at local, national, and international conferences and local colloquia.

"...It is a great read whether you believe in ghosts and the paranormal, or not, and would be useful to scholars of heritage to broaden its present political ordering. The text raises many issues of interest to students of anthropology."... --Anne-Marie d'Hauteserre, American Anthropological Association's Anthropology Book Forum

• Introduction Ghost Tourism and the Production of Haunted Heritage; Chapter 1 Constructing Haunted Destinations: An Analysis of Ghosts on TV, in Travel Literature, and in the Museum; Chapter 2 Discourses and Enactments of Belief and Transformation on Ghost Walks and Commercial Ghost Hunts; Chapter 3 Staging Ghost Hunts: The Roles of Knowledge, Expertise, and Science in Ghost Tourism; Chapter 4 Encountering the Ghostly: Mediumship, Populism, and the Articulation of Amateur Expertise; Chapter 5 “This is the Real England”: Discourses of Authenticity, National Belonging, and Difference; conclusion The Populist Logic of Haunted Heritage and its Consequences;