English 275 - WITCHES/WITCHCRAFT/WITCH HUNTS

This course has two central ambitions. First, it introduces themes of magic and witchcraft in (mostly) American literature and film. We work together to figure out how the figure of the witch functions in stories, novels and movies, what witches and witchcraft mean or how they participate in the texts' ways of making meaning. At the same time, we try to figure out how witches and witchcraft function as loci or displacements of social anxiety-about power, science, gender, class, race and politics. Since the identification of witches and the fear of witchcraft often lead to witch panics, we finally examine the historical and cultural phenomenon of the witch hunt, including both the persecution of persons literally marked as witches and the analogous persecution of persons (Communists, sexual outsiders, etc.) figuratively "hunted" as witches have been. Open to students at all levels, regardless of major. (E)