Technologies of Illusion: Enchanting Modernity’s Machines by Cheryl Spinner Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Supervisor ___________________________ Joseph Donahue ___________________________ Kathy A. Psomiades ___________________________ Shawn Michelle Smith ___________________________ Jane Thrailkill Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 ABSTRACT Technologies of Illusion: Enchanting Modernity’s Machines by Cheryl Spinner Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ [Priscilla Wald], Supervisor ___________________________ [Joseph Donahue] ___________________________ [Kathy A. Psomiades] ___________________________ [Shawn Michelle Smith] ___________________________ [Jane Thrailkill] An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University [2017] Copyright by Cheryl Spinner 2017 Abstract Technologies of Illusion: Enchanting Modernity’s Machines confronts how the disenchantment of modernity has occluded nineteenth‐century Spiritualist archives. By incorporating literary, visual, and archival methodologies, the dissertation recovers the non‐normative supernatural histories that are preserved within photographs, novels, and supernatural testimonies. By eschewing scholarly method that is rooted in parsing out fact from fiction, Technologies of Illusions gives dignity to the Spiritualist artifacts that eschew such demarcations, and, by extension, the communities who believed in them. i Dedication To my Mishpacha— the living and the dead. ii Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... i List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ v Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xii Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Synchronicity as Literary Practice ........................................................................................ 8 Experiencing Photography’s Third Dimension................................................................ 12 Overview of Chapters .......................................................................................................... 26 1. Enchanted Optics: Excavating the Magical Empiricism of Holmesian Stereoscopic Sight .............................................................................................................................................. 30 1.1 Enchanted Microscopic Sight in Holmes’ Essays on the Stereograph .................... 33 1.2 Stereography’s New Powers of Perception: Enchantment and Three‐Dimensional Science Photographs, from the Nineteenth to the Twenty‐First Centuries .................. 58 1.3 Holmesian Stereosopic Literature and the Feminization of Enchanted Sight ....... 72 2. Images in Dark Rooms: The Occult Photochemistry of William Mumler, Julia Margaret Cameron, and James VanDerZee ............................................................................ 79 2.1 Mumler and the Science of Photography .................................................................... 90 2.2 Witches of the Darkroom: Julia Margaret Cameron and the Kodak Girl ............. 111 2.3 Playing in the Dark: James VanDerZee, Wizard of the Darkroom ....................... 128 2.4 Conclusion: Enchanting Photographic History and the Politics of the Darkroom ............................................................................................................................................... 149 3. Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? Occult Feminism and Intuitive History in Mary Todd Lincoln’s Circle of Women ............................................................................................ 152 iii 3.1 The Mumlers ................................................................................................................. 165 3.2 Mary Todd Lincoln and Historiographic Disbelief ................................................. 169 3.3. Nettie Colburn Maynard and Alternative Spiritualist Histories .......................... 175 3.4. Abraham Lincoln, the Practical Mystic .................................................................... 186 4. Mystic Morse: Occult Feminism and Queer Technoeroticism in the History and Literature of the Telegraph ...................................................................................................... 199 4.1 Annie Ellsworth and the First Telegraphic Romance .............................................. 205 4.2 The Queer Technoerotics of the Telegraph in Nineteenth‐Century Online Dating ............................................................................................................................................... 215 References .................................................................................................................................. 243 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 250 iv List of Figures Figure 1: “Little Bobbie, Spirit Photograph,” 2013. ................................................................ 11 Figure 2: Roche, T.C. “Dead Confederate Soldier In the Trenches.“ Stereograph. 1865. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. ................................................................................... 18 Figure 3: Spinner, Cheryl. “Dead Confederate Soldier In the Trenches” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. .............................................................................................................................. 19 Figure 4: John Reekie. “Collecting the Remains of the Dead. “ Stereograph. April 1865, Printed Later. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. .......................................................... 20 Figure 5: Spinner, Cheryl. “Collecting the Remains of the Dead.” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. .............................................................................................................................. 21 Figure 6: Anonymous French Photographer. “A Veiled Woman.” Stereoscopic daguerreotype, circa 1850s. Image taken from online Sotheby’s auction catalog. ........... 22 Figure 7: Spinner, Cheryl. “A Veiled Woman.” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. .............. 23 Figure 8: Dr. Howard A. Kelly,1910. Stereoroentgenography: Pulmonary Tuberculosis. X‐ray Stereograph. ...................................................................................................................... 24 Figure 9: Spinner, Cheryl. “Stereoroentgenography: Pulmonary Tuberculosis.” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. ................................................................................................. 25 Figure 10: “Heart and Hand.” 1896. Stereograph. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ....................................................................................................................................................... 37 Figure 11: Spinner, Cheryl. “Heart and Hand” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. ............... 38 Figure 12: “Her Guardian Angel.” Stereograph. 1898. Keystone View Company. Personal Collection of Cheryl Spinner. .................................................................................... 40 Figure 13: Spinner, Cheryl. “Her Guardian Angel” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. ....... 41 Figure 14: “Ifah you could shee yourself th’way I shee you, you would be ‘stonished too.” Stereocard. 1897. Underwood and Underwood Publishers. Personal Collection of Cheryl Spinner. ............................................................................................................................ 42 v Figure 15: “Ifah you could shee yourself th’way I shee you, you would be ‘stonished too” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. ........................................................................................ 43 Figure 16: Wilson A. Bentley. Wilson Bentley’s Snowflake 1152. Albumen Print. 1890. Smithsonian Institution Archives. Washington, D.C. ............................................................ 49 Figure 17: “The Stereograph as an Educator‐Underwood Patent Extension Cabinet in a Home Library. New York: Underwood & Underwood. c 1901 March 22. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. ...................................................................................................... 50 Figure 18: Spinner, Cheryl. “The Stereograph as an Educator‐Underwood Patent extension Cabinet in a Home Library.” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. ............................ 51 Figure 19: Haynes, F. Jay. “Wet‐plate camera 5 x 8 or Stereoscopic (Double). Data from: University of California, San Diego. ARTstor. ........................................................................ 55 Figure 20: Colligan, Collette. “Stereograph.” Victorian Review. 34.1 (2008): 75. ............... 56 Figure 21: Spinner, Cheryl. “Sex in 3D.” Anaglyph. 2017. Durham, N.C. .......................... 57 Figure 22: “Full Moon From