“The Library Beyond the Vail: a Brief History of Post-Mortem and Channeled Texts”

Mandi Shepp, Librarian at the Marion H. Skidmore Library in Historic Lily Dale, NY will be speaking about the history of post-mortem and channeled texts, and will be bringing a selection of material from the library to view.

“Monster-Wives and Animal-Paramours: Occult Scrapbooks in the Helen Adam Collection”

Alison Fraser, PhD candidate in the English Department, University at Buffalo, will be speaking about her research in the occult scrapbooks from the Helen Adam Collection, part of the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries. Alison will also be pulling material from the collection to view.

Please join us to hear these two perspectives into Special Collection Library research. Artifact: an Exploration of Format and Function will also be on display.

Sneak peek from Fraser’s presentation:

Adam juxtaposes two conflicting accounts of magical women in the wild to serve as the base of her own dark tale, reshaping the Scottish ballad tradition of animal-paramours and monster-wives. Adam’s adaptation of the Scottish tradition of monster-wife ballads, where a human (nearly always a woman) is enchanted into a beast, and must be rescued by a desirable man through a sexual encounter, has provocative political implications for modern readings. Yet Adam disrupts this tradition by calling into question whether the fair young wife has ever been wholly human, and completely disregards this final step of the enchantment: the man is desirable not for his sexual prowess but for how he tastes.