The Place of Witches: An Anthropology of Witchcraft, Healing, and Magic in the Atlantic World

Description

The Place of Witches explores witchcraft, healing, and magic in the Atlantic World from an anthropological perspective. The course modules cover a series of core topics that include spirit possession, child witches, ethno-medicine and healing, the regulation of sorcery and witchcraft, revitalization movements, and witch-hunting. It draws on a vast anthropological and historical literature that has greatly expanded our knowledge of changing belief and practice in West Africa, the Caribbean, the eastern seaboard of the Americas, and the island states of the North Atlantic. We take inspiration from some classic works in anthropology by scholars such Rosalind Shaw, Paul Stoller, Edward Evans-Pritchard, Michael Taussig, and Éric de Rosny, as well as exciting new research that has revealed, inter alia, the relationship of witchcraft to modernity, and its connections to the Atlantic slave trade and its legacies. In our first module, we set the scene for what follows by identifying the trans-regional, trans-national, and global currents that influenced local witchcraft configurations, and played a key role in shaping relations of power and violence in the Atlantic World. The six substantive modules use a series of case studies to critically examine key topics in the field. The main themes that flow through these sections include relationships of power and subjugation, the roles of gender and the body, the links between structure and agency, the centrality of intimate relations, cross-cultural interaction, and the politics of representation.