Massicotte follows in these footsteps but also carves out her own path using both feminist and psychoanalytic theory. On a macro scale, social historians have been particularly interested in spiritualism's role as a magnet for those seeking alternative spiritualities, for political dissenters, and for suffragists.

Historians such as the late Janet Oppenheim, and more recently Beth Robertson, among others, have examined both who was attracted to spiritualism and how it challenged science, medical authority, and gender norms. The history of spiritualism and its cultural impact in the West, as well as its intersections with technology, medicine, and gender, has been a burgeoning subject during the past several decades. Claudie Massicotte's Trance Speakers is an engaging and innovative meditation on the role spiritual sГ©ances played from 1850 to 1930 in helping female mediums speak-both literally and figuratively-on a range of pertinent contemporary subjects that were otherwise a male preserve.

Sixth seance