Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America" (University of Virginia Press, 2025)

New Books in Indigenous Studies · Jun 8, 2025 · 45m

In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explains the foundational role of ghost stories in fostering the cultural imaginary, offering a medium for framing political ideologies, philosophical thought, racial anxieties, and social concerns. Ghosts and Their Hosts analyzes American ghost stories, considering their role as a settler colonial tool that emerged to help justify land appropriation and human labor exploitation. Dr. Blažan breaks with the long tradition of reading ghosts as harbingers of…