All courses numbered 500 and above are graduate courses.
Undergraduates need to submit a course permit to enroll.
HIST 710 Witchcraft in the Early Modern World
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
This course explores the society and culture of the early modern world by focusing on one of its most widespread, intensely debated, and tension filled aspects: witchcraft. The mere mention of the term or of such close cousins as possession, demonology, exorcism, magic, and the witches' Sabbath, raises for us a clear historical challenge. Namely, how can the detailed analysis of witchcraft—including beliefs, patterns of accusation, the general social position of "victims" the intensity of the "witch hunts," and its articulation with religious practice, law, language, gender, social marginalization, and property – lead us to a more humane understanding of culture and lived experience in the period? Given that these terms and issues had no fixed meanings for any past societies, how can we arrive at usable language for analysis? These are some of the questions that structure the seminar. In addition, as recent scholarly work on early modern witchcraft makes abundantly clear, we will be considering vital questions of methodology and theoretical approaches to cultural history as we progress. From the outset, we will understand the "early modern world" to mean: western Europe, including its northern outposts in Scandinavia and Iceland , and the colonial possessions of those nations (England , Spain , Portugal , France , Germany) invested in New World imperial expansion. Among other things, this means we will be examining the nature of colonial witchcraft, including not only that of colonial planters and Creoles (such as at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692) but also that of Native societies who came into contact with European cultural practices, and whose beliefs were effectively "demonized" by Conquistadors, Jesuits, and Puritans.
