Erika W. Dyson (B. A. Summa Cum Laude, Mount Holyoke College 1999; M. A. Columbia University 2004; M. Phil. Columbia University, 2006) is a Ph.D. candidate in the North American Religious History Program.  Her areas of general interest include the history of the so-called battle between religion and science in the United States, nineteenth-century American religious movements (such as the Spiritualists and Latter-day Saints), and the intersections of religion, police power and law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Specifically, recent research has addressed the pedagogical philosophies of Andrew Jackson Davis, the cozy relationship between Victorian “family values” and foundational notions of police power, and the manifold ways Spiritualists have run afoul of the law in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. 

Dissertation Title:  ‘Spiritualism and Crime:’ Negotiating Prophecy and Police Power at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.

My dissertation examines the cases of Spiritualist mediums and ministers arrested under fortune telling laws during the first decades of the twentieth century in America.  Through a close examination of a few cases, and a wider look at a perfect storm of factors converging during this period to make Spiritualists the special targets of law enforcement and moral reform, this dissertation will address the ways in which jurists and legislators took on the task of defining “religion,” “real” religion (as opposed to fakery or false religion), and acceptable religious behavior for the American public, even as they disavowed regulatory power over religious belief.  These opinions, briefs and arguments reveal tangible instances of the ambivalent relationship the American government has had with religious groups, a relationship that is no more clear or simple in America today.  They also provide valuable insight into the ways police power has been used to regulate public morality in American history.  Through discussing these cases and the efforts of Spiritualists to police their own boundaries against fakes and charlatans, I hope to contribute to the growing discussion in the fields of American history and religious studies of how this myth of church/state separation has masked a more complex reality – that jurists were busy making, defining and judging religion in these court cases, and these cases were in turn shaping how individuals and groups were practicing their religions.