The Fox Sisters: Pioneers of Spiritualism and Feminism, a lecture and conversation with author Barbara Weisberg

Date: Friday, June 10th
Time: 7pm
Admission: $8
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn

Tickets Here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2538539

In March, 1848, two young sisters, Kate and Maggie Fox, claimed to be communicating with a murdered peddler, and so gave rise to the Spiritualist movement.  A few months later and a few miles away, the participants in the Seneca Falls Convention helped ignite the fight for women’s rights, a struggle continued by today’s feminists. However, the origins of Spiritualism and Feminism have far more in common than timing and geography. As epitomized by the Fox sisters, Spiritualist mediums were pioneers in the effort to expand women’s role in society, and they often suffered ridicule and worse for their efforts. Unlike most women’s rights advocates, however, they could claim the spirits as their inspiration and turn to them for solace.  Barbara Weisberg, author of Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism, looks at some of the similarities and differences between the Fox sisters and their sisters in the women’s rights movement.

Barbara Weisberg received the American Antiquarian Society’s Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Grant as well as the Parapsychology Foundation’s D. Scott Rogo Award for her book Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism, named one of the best biographies of 2004 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is also the author of four children’s books and has produced many TV shows.  Currently, she is writing a book about an illuminating and dysfunctional 19th century marriage.

Tickets are non-refundable unless the event is canceled.