Butler, Alison -

Submitted by root on Thu, 2010/06/24 - 4:52pm
Personal Information
First Name: 
Alison
Last Name: 
Butler
Department / Program: 
History
University Affiliation: 
Memorial University
Phone: 
9028673946
Email Address: 
abutler@stfx.ca
Area of Research
Subject: 
Religion
Geographical Region: 
Great Britain
Time Period: 
19th Century
Specific Area of Research: 
Victorian occultism; western esotericism. My two-year SSHRC-funded research project will examine how contemporary developments in science affected the evolution of Victorian occultism. This program of research will explore how occultists attempted to make their field more “scientific” in response to the rise of scientific naturalism and how the resulting refashioned form of occultism proved to be more conducive to association with the emerging science of the mind, psychology.
Academics
PHD Program: 
History
PHD University: 
University of Bristol
PHD Date: 
2004
Major Publications: 
Invoking Tradition: Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic (forthcoming 2009: Palgrave Macmillan) "Anna Kingsford: Scientist and Sorceress," in David Clifford, Elisabeth Wadge, Alex Warwick, Martin Willis (eds), Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Science (London: Anthem Press, 2006), 59-69. "Making Magic Modern: Nineteenth-Century Adaptations," The Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies, 6.2 (Fall 2004), 212-230.
Membership in Academic Societies: 
Societas Magica, Northeast Victorian Studies Association
Courses Taught: 
Victorian Britian, 20th-Century Britain, Global History