Mormon Studies Review
Keywords
cult of the dead, Euro-Americans, Protestantism, Spiritualist movement, material culture
Abstract
Erik Seeman’s Speaking with the Dead in Early America traces the development of a cult of the dead among Euro-Americans in the Northeast over a period of three hundred years. This impressive study explores religious and popular views toward communication with the dead and the surprising role of those views in shaping Protestantism. Seeman seeks to explain how Protestants understood otherworldly communication prior the emergence of the Spiritualist movement in the late 1840s. The eight chapters in this volume follow chronological order from the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, with some chapters focused on material objects and others on texts such as sermons, letters, broadsides, and diaries. Seeman’s equal attention to texts and objects, including gravestones, embroidery, and mourning jewelry, is innovative. This emphasis on both material culture and literary analysis makes this volume a deeply rewarding contribution to the history of early American religious culture.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Peone, Tricia R.
(2021)
"Review: Erik R. Seeman. Speaking with the Dead in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.,"
Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 8:
No.
1, Article 27.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol8/iss1/27