Deck the Halls (Carefully): Poisonous Plants of Christmas
Victorian Spiritualism offered women a tantalising glimpse of freedom through the financial earning power and social status provided to popular mediums. Indeed, while male mediums did exist and regularly toured Britain, it is the figure of the female medium that has characterised how we view these seance leaders in contemporary popular culture. Michelle Yeoh plays one such figure in the latest Poirot film, A Haunting in Venice. This talk will explore how the female medium has been represented in a selection of British films, including The Stone Tape, Quatermass and the Pit, and The Others.
Speaker Bio:
Dr Icy Sedgwick is the host of the Fabulous Folklore podcast, investigating the fascinating world of European folklore with a focus on the British Isles, and the author of Rebel Folklore, Ghostlore, Bring Me Love, and Fate or Fortune. She is fascinated by plant lore, ghost stories, lost gods, and divination. Former ghost hunter Icy also holds a PhD in Film Studies after examining the representation of haunted houses in contemporary Hollywood cinema. https://www.icysedgwick.com
Curated & Hosted by
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon
Don’t worry if you can’t make the talk live on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
