Although I expect that most people will find this collection of academic papers too specialized and the academic language a little dense, there is a great deal of very interesting content in here.
When we think about witches and witchcraft we typically think of white, European women, either a few hundred years ago in Europe or the eastern United States or at present in the New Age movements of the wealthy Global North. There is not a great deal of writing that broadens out the view to include the great majority of brown and black humanity living in the Global South or racial minority voices in the North or the impacts of colonialism.
This wide-ranging collection features scholarship from India, Turkey, Pakistan, Tanzania, Italy, Ireland and the United States, with topics ranging from contemporary witch-hunts through drag and gender play in witchcraft, representation of witchcraft in Indian cinema and popular music in North America, representation of witches in popular culture in the West, and various feminist and queer political engagements with witchcraft, and discussion of race and class issues in witchcraft communities.
With thirty-two short chapters inside 507 pages, there is a great range and a lot of provocative and interesting discussion here. Each chapter has a short bibliography for follow-up reading and they are grouped into broad categories: The Colonial Encounter; Lineages of Healing; Killing the Witch; Art, Aesthetics, and Cultural Production; Protest and Reclaiming; and Witch Epistemologies.
I am very pleased to be able to begin to broaden out my understanding and to sample such a great range of interesting scholarship. I strongly recommend this collection to the academically inclined.
~review by Samuel Wagar
Editors: Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward
Duke University Press
572 pg. Paperback £21 / $39 Can / $28 US
