Professor Morrisson Publishes New Book
From the Indiana Jones movies to the music of Black Sabbath to the Harry Potter books, contemporary popular culture has no shortage of underlying occult themes.
Turns out, those ideas have their origins in the popular fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to Mark S. Morrisson, professor of English and associate dean for undergraduate studies in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts.
In his latest book, “Light on the Path: Advancing Occultism Through Esoteric Fiction, 1880-1940,” published by Oxford University Press, Morrisson traces how a group of modern occultists in the United States and Great Britain used the increasing popularity of mass-market genre fiction to influence a rapidly growing reading public.