April 16, 2009 - The religious movement of spiritism in Mexico is the focus of the spring history forum slated for Friday, April 24, at 3:30 p.m. in the Albertson Room at California State University, Bakersfield. Lia Schraeder, a CSUB lecturer who earned her doctorate from the University of California, Davis, will make the presentation based on a portion of her dissertation and manuscript on the religious movement.

Schraeder believes scholars of Mexican history generally represent spiritism as a "dissident" social movement and associate it with the first president of the Mexican Revolution, Francisco Madero. The presentation will explore the latent radicalism within spiritist rituals and look at the boundaries of the movement.

Since its inception in 1999, the History Forum has presented one speaker per academic quarter. Past topics have included the history of the California wine industry by historian Victor Geraci; an oral history and the Chicano experience in World War II given by Mario Garcia, from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the history of the Basque settlement in Bakersfield presented by Jeri Echeverria, Fresno State University provost and historian.

The forum is free and open to the public.