Guest Speaker Series: Dr. Elizabeth Masarik, “Spiritualism’s Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale”

The Holland Land Office Museum is proud to welcome the next presenter in our Guest Speaker Series on Saturday, October 11th at 11 am. Dr. Elizabeth Masarik of SUNY Brockport will be presenting on a book she co-authored with the other producers of their award-winning podcast Dig: A History Podcast, “Spiritualism’s Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale.” Copies of the book will be available for sale.Admission is $5 or $3 for museum members. If you plan to attend, please contact the museum at 585-343-4727 or hollandlandoffice@gmail.com.

“In Spiritualism’s Place, four friends and scholars who produce the acclaimed Dig: A History Podcast, share their curiosity and enthusiasm for uncovering stories from the past as they explore the history of Lily Dale. Located in western New York State, the world’s largest center for Spiritualism was founded in 1879. Lily Dale has been a home for Spiritualists attempting to make contact with the dead, as well as a gathering place for reformers, a refuge for seekers looking for alternatives to established paths of knowledge, and a target for skeptics.”

Dr. Masarik is an Assistant Professor of History at SUNY Brockport. Her award-winning book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State focuses on women’s reform movements in the Gilded Age/Progressive Era. She is the author of “Por la Raza, Para la Raza: Jovita Idar and Progressive-era Mexicana Maternalism in the Texas-Mexican Border,” published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. The article won the A. Elizabeth Taylor Article Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians. Elizabeth was the inaugural SUNY Dr. Virginia Radley Fellowship for women’s history. She earned an MA and PhD from the University at Buffalo and BA from the University of Texas at Austin.
The Guest Speaker Series is sponsored in part by Tompkins Community Bank and the Batavia Rotary Club.