Spiritualism's Place: Author Talk with Averill Earls & Elizabeth Masarik

In Spiritualism's Place: Reformers Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale, four friends and scholars who produce the acclaimed Dig: A History Podcast, share their curiosity and enthusiasm for uncovering stories from the past as they explore the history of Lily Dale. Lily Dale has been a home for Spiritualists attempting to make contact with the dead, as well as a gathering place for reformers, a refuge for seekers looking for alternatives to established paths of knowledge, and a target for skeptics. In this webinar, two of the book’s authors, Averill Earls and Elizabeth Garner Masarik, give an overview of their research and how the book came together.

Spiritualism’s Place provides an intimate history of Lily Dale, NY, a center for Spiritualism that was founded in Western NY in 1879. The book reveals the role that this fascinating place has played within the history of Spiritualism, as well as within the development of the women's suffrage and temperance movements, and the world of New Age religion. As an intentional community devoted to Spiritualist beliefs and practices, Lily Dale brings together multiple strands in the social and religious history of New York and the United States over the past 150 years: feminism, social reform, utopianism, new religious movements, and cultural appropriation.

Authors Averill Earls, Sarah Handley-Cousins, Elizabeth Garner Masarik, and Marissa C. Rhodes each identify one site in Lily Dale and one theme that its history illuminates. They use those sites and themes to approach Lily Dale not as debunkers but as inquisitive researchers and storytellers. Spiritualism's Place breaks myths, unveils unexpected stories, and finds new ways to contemplate Spiritualism's role in American history.

Averill Earls, PhD: Averill is a historian of modern Ireland and sexuality, and writes about same-sex desiring men, policing, and Dublin’s queer urban spaces. She is an Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, where she teaches European, digital, and sexuality history. She’s currently a host for the New Books in Irish Studies podcast and the Layout Editor at Nursing Clio. She won the 2021 Judith R. Walkowitz Award for Gender History from the North American Conference on British Studies for her article, “Solicitor Brown and His Boy,” and has a contract with Temple University Press for her forthcoming book, Love in the Lav. When she’s not teaching, podcasting, or moonlighting as a member of the Cabot Creamery Co-operative social media team, she enjoys board games, baking, and puppy snuggles. Averill tweets from @aearls.

Elizabeth Garner Masarik, PhD: Elizabeth is an Assistant Professor of History at SUNY Brockport. Her book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State focuses on women’s reform movements in the Gilded Age/Progressive Era. She is the author of “Por la Raza, Para la Raza: Jovita Idar and Progressive-era Mexicana Maternalism in the Texas-Mexican Border,” published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. The article won the A. Elizabeth Taylor Article Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians. Elizabeth is the inaugural SUNY Dr. Virginia Radley Fellowship for women’s history. She earned an MA and PhD from the University at Buffalo and BA from the University of Texas at Austin. When she’s not teaching or podcasting she’s either getting tattooed or planning her next trip to Disney World. Elizabeth tweets from @EGMasarik.

This author talk is presented as part of the Preservation League of NYS's Preservation Book Club. Thank you to our sponsor, the Peggy N. & Roger G. Gerry Charitable Trust.