Photo by Carla Guerrón Montero.
On April 25th, I had the opportunity to lead a workshop as part of the 2026 Emerging Scholars Symposium, a convening hosted by the University of Delaware and Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library.
Thanks to the wonderful staff of the Winterthur Library, I was able to find some really exciting materials related to the history of fortune telling in the collection. The objects I pulled ranged from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century trade catalogs (with guides to palmistry and other methods of divination interspersed between advertisements for commodities like corsets and vitamins) to children’s literature, and from games to journal manuscripts. I introduced and contextualized these materials for the group, then gave the participants time to browse the texts for themselves.
The next component of the program was hands-on fortune telling practice. I brought in a reproduction card deck of one of the main objects I consider for my dissertation, and I recreated some of the components of one of the games on view for the workshop–Parker Brothers’ Game of Venetian Fortune Teller, from around 1910. Walking through the technique of reading the future with these games helped us engage our senses beyond just the visual, and to think through how the objects set up systems of hierarchy through spatial relationships.
Leading this workshop was a great experience. Working with this group helped me think through future strategies for connecting with public audiences. It also reminded me of part of the reason I started working on divination objects: they pull people in!
Photos by Katherine Feldkamp.
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