Professor Christine Ferguson

Professor in English

English Studies University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Christine Ferguson

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About me

About me

Christine Ferguson is a Professor in English Studies in the Division of Literature and Languages, where her research focuses on the entwined histories of the literary gothic and the British occult revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Before coming to Stirling in 2016, she taught at the University of Glasgow from 2008-2016, at the University of Alberta from 2004-2008, and was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia from 2002-2004. She currently sits on the editorial boards for the Journal of Victorian Culture, Victorian Review, Victoriographies, the Cambridge Elements in Magic and the Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism series.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the English Association.

 Her major publications include the books Determined Spirits: Eugenics, Heredity, and Racial Regeneration in Anglo-American Spiritualist Writing 1848-1930 (2012) and Language, Science, and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (2006); she is the editor of Spiritualism, Health, Race, and Human Variation (2014), a volume in Routledge’s Spiritualism 1840-1930 facsimile edition series, and, with Andrew Radford, The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947 (Routledge 2018). She is currently at work on a scholarly edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Land of Mist for the Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Arthur Conan Doyle, and a monograph on the popular fiction produced by leading figures in Britain's occult revival, including Edward Bulwer Lytton, Emma Hardinge Britten, Mabel Collins, H.P. Blavatsky, A.P. Sinnett, Arthur Machen, Dion Fortune, and Aleister Crowley.

She leads the AHRC Follow-On Funding project, "The Media of Mediumship: Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain’s Science, Technology, and Magic Collections," which runs between 2021-22 and in collaboration with the Science Museum Group and Senate House Library. She was PI on the AHRC network project, Popular Occulture in Britain, 1875-1947.

Other Project

Popular Occulture in Britain, 1875-1947
University of Glasgow, University College Dublin (UCD) and Birkbeck University of London

http://www.stir.ac.uk/popular-occulture-in-britain/
AHRC Network Grant

Determined Spirits: Eugenics, Heredity, and Racial Hygiene in Transatlantic Spiritualist Writing, 1848-1930

AHRC Early Career Fellowship

Languages of the Dead: The Afterlife of English in Late Victorian and Edwardian British Literature

SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship


Research (2)

Victorian Literature Spiritualism and Occultism in Literature Gothic Literature and Medicine Disability Studies Neo-Victorianism Graphic Novels and Comics

Projects

The Media of Mediumship: Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain's Science, Technology and Magic Collections
PI: Professor Christine Ferguson
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Popular Occulture in Britain, 1875-1947
PI: Professor Christine Ferguson
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Outputs (43)

Outputs

Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2021) Women Writers and the Theosophical Tale of Terror. In: Bloom C (ed.) Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic. Palgrave Gothic. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 541-557. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030408657


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2020) Zanoni’s Daughters: Fin de Siècle Fictions of Female Initiation. In: Chajes J & Huss B (eds.) The Cosmic Movement: Sources, Contexts, Impact. Goldstein-Goren Library of Jewish Thought, 27. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, pp. 91-126. https://www.bialik-publishing.co.il/index.php?dir=site&page=catalog&op=item&cs=5290


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2020) The Case of Fletcher: Shell Shock, Spiritualism, and Oliver Lodge’s Raymond. In: Mussell J & Gooday G (eds.) A Pioneer of Connection: Recovering the Life and Career of Oliver Lodge. Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century. Pittsburgh, PA, USA: University of Pittsburgh Press. https://upittpress.org/books/9780822945956/


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2020) New Religions and Esotericism. In: Denisoff D & Schaffer T (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature. Routledge Literature Companions. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 414-425. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Victorian-Literature-1st-Edition/Denisoff-Schaffer/p/book/9781138579866


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2019) What does Popular Fiction have to do with the Occult?. In: Hanegraaf W, Forshaw P & Pasi M (eds.) Hermes Explains: Thirty Questions about Esotericism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 95-104. https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463720205/hermes-explains


Keynote

Ferguson C (2019) Journoccultism: Newspaper Scrying from Machen to Fort. Approaching Esotericism and Mysticism: Cultural Influences, The Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, 05.06.2019-07.06.2019.


Edited Book

Ferguson C & Radford A (eds.) (2018) The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947. Among the Victorians and Modernists, 6. London: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/The-Occult-Imagination-in-Britain-1875-1947/Ferguson-Radford/p/book/9781472486981


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2017) Dracula and the Occult. In: Luckhurst R (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Dracula. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 57-65. http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-1830-1900/cambridge-companion-dracula?format=HB#eg64W44bpHs7c0XO.97


Keynote

Ferguson C (2017) Imagined Publics and Occult Mediation. The Medial Breakthrough in Norwegian Literature, 1855-1905, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 20.06.2017-21.10.2020.


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2017) Occult Sciences. In: Holmes J & Ruston S (eds.) The Routledge Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Science. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 423-437. https://www.routledge.com/The-Ashgate-Research-Companion-to-Nineteenth-Century-British-Literature/Holmes-Ruston/p/book/9781472429872


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2016) Mixed Media: Olivia Plender’s A Stellar Key to the Summerland and the Afterlife of Spiritualist Visual Culture. In: Jones A & Mitchell R (eds.) Drawing on the Victorians: The Palimpsest of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Graphic Texts. Series in Victorian Studies. Athens, OH, USA: Ohio University Press, pp. 121-150. http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Drawing+on+the+Victorians


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2015) Arthur Machen. In: Felluga D (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 969-972. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118405382.html


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2014) Introduction. In: Ferguson C (ed.) Spiritualism 1840-1930: Vol. 1: Health, Race, and Human Variation. Victorian Concepts. London: Routledge, pp. 1-20. https://www.routledge.com/Spiritualism-1840-1930/Pulham-Ferguson-Arias-Kontou/p/book/9780415683067


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2012) Recent Scholarship on Spiritualism and Science. In: Kontou T & Willburn S (eds.) The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult. Ashgate Research Companion. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 19-24. https://www.routledge.com/The-Ashgate-Research-Companion-to-Nineteenth-Century-Spiritualism-and-the/Kontou-Willburn/p/book/9780754669128


Book Chapter

Ferguson C (2008) Elephant Talk: Language and Enfranchisement in the Merrick Case. In: Tromp M (ed.) Victorian Freaks: The Social Work of Nineteenth-Century Freakery. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, pp. 114-133. https://ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/Tromp%20Victorian.html


Article

Ferguson C (2002) Decadence as Scientific Fulfillment. PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 117 (3), pp. 465-478. http://www.jstor.org/stable/823145