Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Dr Alexandra Roginski is a historian and writer based on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne, Australia, and a Visiting Fellow of the State Library of New South Wales and Deakin University.

• 1. Bumps on the road: phrenological touts and travellers; 2. Massaging the town: phrenological ordeals and audiences; 3. Tactics on stage: indigenous performers, cultural exchange and negotiated power; 4. A godly touch of male power: phrenology, mesmerism and gendered authority; 5. Talking heads on a Murray River mission; 6. Black phrenologists, black masks; 7. Popular science in a changing Māori world; 8. Gardening a Duropean island: phrenologists, whiteness and reform for nationhood; 9. Divinatory science in the city and the bush; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

'Marvellous! Roginski puts phrenology into colonial life with skill, elegance and deep scholarly commitment. The spaces, people and knowledges here - vernacular, itinerant, antipodean - make us think freshly about popular sciences and their nineteenth-century performances.' Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales