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The rise of practical phrenology in the U.S. via the work of one 19th-century family, who not only built a cultural empire around the pseudoscience but made it central to various reform movements, will be the topic of a talk on Tuesday, April 14, at the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries.
Vanderbilt Professor of Communication Studies Paul Stob will discuss his latest book, Empire of Skulls: Phrenology, the Fowler Family, and a New Nation’s Quest to Unlock the Secrets of the Mind, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the Central Library Community Room. The talk and a reception to follow are free and open to the public.
Copies of Stob’s book, to be published April 14 by Counterpoint Press, will be available for purchase at the event from Parnassus Books. A limited number of free copies will be available to Vanderbilt students who RSVP on Anchor Link while supplies last. Students must attend the April 14 event to pick up their book.
The talk is part of Dialogue Vanderbilt’s “250 Conversations on America: Civil Discourse in Action,” a yearlong series celebrating our nation’s 250th anniversary and Vanderbilt’s enduring commitment to open dialogue.
About the book
During the contentious and progressive antebellum era, the Fowler family preached a gospel of self-improvement to a nation eager to embrace its foundational beliefs. For the first time, the new “science” of phrenology—the process of observing or feeling the skull to determine an individual’s psychological attributes—offered all Americans the ability to improve their station by unlocking their innate mental and emotional truths. Revered politicians, quirky celebrities, infamous criminals and social outcasts all found their way to the Fowlers for skull readings.
Brimming with the energy to change the world, the Fowlers connected phrenology to practically every aspect of life in the young nation—from abolition to women’s rights, temperance to prison reform, spiritualism and mesmerism to vegetarianism and sexual education. But there was a dark side to this fad and to the Fowlers, and soon nefarious forces co-opted this once-hopeful sensation to justify racism and xenophobia.
“In this original and compelling book, Paul Stob sheds light on a forgotten but vital moment in American life,” said Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in American Presidency at Vanderbilt. “Absorbing, eloquent and insightful, Empire of Skulls is nonfiction at its best, an indelible tale that surprises, entertains and instructs.”
About the author
Stob is director of the Program in Culture, Advocacy and Leadership at Vanderbilt, where he also teaches in the Department of Communication Studies and the Program in Communication of Science and Technology. His research and teaching focus on American intellectual culture in the 19th century, with an emphasis on the connection between reading, writing and lecturing as well as religion, democracy, populism and social movements.
Stob is the author of William James & the Art of Popular Statement (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and Intellectual Populism: Democracy, Inquiry, and the People (Michigan State University Press, 2020). He is co-author with Stephen Lucas of The Art of Public Speaking (McGraw-Hill), which is now in its 14th edition and sells more than 100,000 copies a year in various print and electronic editions. Empire of Skulls is his first trade book.