Witchcraft: European and postcolonial perspectives

This course examines witchcraft beliefs and practices in both European (15th -19th century) and postcolonial societies. It offers a comparative view on key themes in European and non-European witchcraft: witchcraft and gender, the role of the modern/colonial state, the witch and her/his community, the magical properties of the body, healing and illness as discourses about power.
The course is interdisciplinary and students will engage with a variety of primary documents such as records of witchcraft trials and visual representations. We will examine historical and anthropological texts through a range of theoretical frameworks including feminist and postcolonial perspectives.

Coordinator
Dr. Jacqueline Van Gent

Semester: One, 2006

Text
Course Reader

Recommended Reading
Behringer, Wolfgang, Withces and Witch-Hunts: a global history. Cambridge: Polity Press 2004.

Gibson, Marion. Reading Witchcraft: stories of early English witches. New York: Routledge, 1999

Ginzburg, Carlo. Nightbattles: witchcraft and agrarian cults in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harmondsorth: Penguin. 1983

Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the devil: witchcraft, sexuality and religion in early modern Europe. London: Routledge, 1994.