About the Book
Stories about witches are by their nature stories about the most basic and profound of human experiences-healing, sex, violence, tragedies, aging, death, and encountering the mystery and magic of the unknown. It is no surprise, then, that witches loom large in our cultural imaginations. In academia, studies of witches rarely emerge from scholars who are themselves witches and/or embedded in communities of witchcraft practitioners. The Witch Studies Reader brings together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners who examine witchcraft from a critical decolonial feminist perspective that decenters Europe and departs from exoticizing and pathologizing writing on witchcraft in the global South. The authors show how witches are keepers of suppressed knowledges, builders of new futures, exemplars of praxis, and theorists in their own right. Throughout, they account for the vastly different national, political-economic, and cultural contexts in which “the witch” is currently being claimed and repudiated. Offering a pathbreaking transnational feminist examination of witches and witchcraft that upends white supremacist, colonial, patriarchal knowledge regimes, this volume brings into being the interdisciplinary field of feminist witch studies.
Contributors. Maria Amir, Ruth Asiimwe, Bernadette Barton, Ethel Brooks, Shelina Brown, Ruth Charnock, Soma Chaudhuri, Carolyn Chernoff, Saira Chhibber, Simon Clay, Krystal Cleary, Adrianna L. Ernstberger, Tina Escaja, Laurie Essig, Marcelitte Failla, D Ferrett, Marion Goldman, Jaime Hartless, Margaretha Haughwout, Patricia Humura, Apoorvaa Joshi, Govind Kelkar, Oliver Kellhammer, AyÇa Kurtoğlu, Helen Macdonald, Isabel Machado, Brandy Renee McCann, Dev Nathan, Mary Jo Neitz, Amy Nichols-Belo, Allison (or AP) Pierce, Emma Quilty, Anna Rogel, Karen Schaller, Jacquelyn Marie Shannon, Shashank Shekhar Sinha, Gabriella V. Smith, Nathan Snaza, Shannon Hughes Spence, Eric Steinhart, Morena Tartari, Nicole Trigg, Katie Von Wald, Tushabe wa Tushabe, Jane Ward
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction to the Reader: Manifesting Witch Studies / Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward 1
I. The Colonial Encounter
1. Witchcraft in My Community: Healing Sex and Sexuality / Tushabe Wa Tushabe, Patricia Humura, and Ruth Asiimwe 23
2. “What Is a Witch?”: Tituba’s Subjunctive Challenge / Nathan Snaza
3. Irish Feminist Witches: Using Witchcraft and Activism to Heal from Violence and Trauma / Shannon Hughes Spence 46
4. Whose Craft?: Contentions in Open and Closed Practice in Contemporary Witchcraft(s) / Apoorva Joshi and Ethel Brooks 60
II. Lineages of Healing
5. “You Deserve, Baby!”: Spiritual Co-creation, Black Witches, and Feminism / Marcelitte Failla 75
6. Resurrecting Granny: A Brief Excavation of Appalachian Folk Magic / Brandy Renee McCann 90
7. “Some Decks May Be Stacked against Us but This Deck Is Ours”: Justice-Centered Tarot in and against the New Age / Krystal Cleary 105
8. Ecstatic Desires: Queerness and the Witch’s Body / Simon Clay and Emma Quilty 118
9. Deitsch Magic Past and Future / Eric Steinhart 131
10. “We Are Here with Our Rebellious Joy”: Witches and Witchcraft in Turkey / AyÇa Kurtoğlu 144
11. Fortune-Telling, Women’s Friendship, and Divination Commodification in Contemporary Italy / Morena Tartari 158
III. Killing the Witch
12. A Feminist Theory of Witch Hunts / Govind Kelkar and Dev Nathan 175
13. Occult Violence and the Savage Slot: Understanding Tanzanian Witch-Killings in Historical and Ethnographic Context / Amy Nichols-Belo 190
14. Going All the Way: From Village to Supreme Court for a Witch-Killing in Central India / Helen MacDonald 205
15. Contemporary Trends in Witch-Hunting in India / Shashank Shekhar Sinha 210
16. Bewitching Gender History / Adrianna L. Ernstberger 233
IV. Art, Aesthetic, and Cultural Production
17. Mista Boo: Portrait of a Drag Witch / Isabel Machado 249
18. Witching Sound in the Anthropocene (and Occultcene) / D Ferrett 262
19. A Witch’s Guide to the Underground: Sixties Counterculture, Dianic Wicca, and the Cultural Trope of the “Witchy Diva” / Shelina Brown 275
20. A Queer Critical Analysis of Contemporary Representations of the Churail in Hindi Film / Saira Chhibber 289
21. Pakistan’s Churails: Young Feminists Choosing “Witch” Way Is Forward / Maria Amir 304
22. From “Born This Witch” to “Bad Bitch Witch”: A History of Witch Representation in Western Pop Culture / Jaime Hartless and Gabriella V. Smith 318
23. “I Put a Spell on Your and Now You’re Mine”: A Vulvacentric Reading of Witchcraft / Anna Rogel 331
V. Protest and Reclaiming
24. Hexing the Patriarchy: The Revolutionary Aesthetics of W.I.T.C.H. / Carolyn Chernoff 347
25. Witch-Ins and Other Feminist Acts / Tina Escaja and Laurie Essig 361
26. Disappearing Acts: Attending “Witch School” in Brooklyn, New York / Jacquelyn Marie Shannon 372
27. We Are All Witches: My Pagan Journey / Bernadette Barton 388
VI. Witch Epistemologies
28. Witching the Institution: Academia and Feminist Witchcraft / Ruth Charnock and Karen Schaller 401
29. A Ruderal Witchcraft Manifesto / Margaretha Haughwout and Oliver Kallhammer 420
30. Feminism as a Demon, or, The Difference Witches Make: Chiara Fumai with Carla Lonzi / Nicole Trigg 436
31. Religion and Magic through Feminist Lenses / Mary Jo Neitz and Marion S. Goldman 449
32. Crafting against Capitalism: Queer Longings for Witch Futures / Katie Von Wald and Ap Pierce 464
Contributors 475
Index 489
About the Author :
Soma Chaudhuri is Associate Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University.
Jane Ward is Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Review :
“In this impressive compendium, materialists and spiritualists, cyborgs and goddesses alike will find much to chew on. Witches of all genders, unite!” - Sophie Lewis author of (Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation) “The Witch Studies Reader is a must-have for scholars and practitioners of witchcraft, esotericism, and the metaphysical. The contributors go beyond the tropes of witches as rebels and recluses to examine the distinctive ways of knowing and being that manifest in their practices. Comprehensive in its scope and unapologetic in its feminist orientation, this volume is nothing less than an academic grimoire, conjuring vital new horizons for the transformative historical and ethnographic study of witchy things.” - Elizabeth Pérez, author of (Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions) "I’m thrilled to see witch studies getting its due, and I can’t wait to read this long-overdue anthology of contributions by transnational witch-scholars sharing their feminism, diversity, wisdom, anti-colonialism and interdisciplinarity." - Karla J. Strand (Ms. Magazine)
