Galvan (English, The Ohio State University) uses the Victorian and turn-of-the-century fascination with technological advances and in the occult as a lens with which to examine the role of
19th-century women as "mediums" for communication. The author argues that authors such as Henry James, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Bram Stoker chose women as communicators (whether as
spiritual mediums or, say, telegraph operators) because of the intimacy they lent to communications at a distance. Galvan finds that the increasing feminization of mediated communication in the
19th and early 20th centuries reveals the challenges that the new networked culture presented to prevailing ideas of gender, dialogue, and privacy. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland,
OR (booknews.com)
