{"id":12300,"date":"2021-06-25T09:24:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T15:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12300"},"modified":"2021-06-25T09:24:25","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T15:24:25","slug":"free-download-on-historians-of-witchcraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12300","title":{"rendered":"Free Download on Historians of Witchcraft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"To be clear, The War on Witchcraft <\/em>treats historical writing about the late medieval and early modern witchtrials, seen as an outbreak of “unreason.”<\/p>\n

From the publisher :<\/p>\n

Historians of the early modern witch-hunt often begin histories of their field with the theories propounded by Margaret Murray and Montague Summers in the 1920s. They overlook the lasting impact of nineteenth-century scholarship, in particular the contributions by two American historians, Andrew Dickson White (1832\u20131918) and George Lincoln Burr (1857\u20131938). Study of their work and scholarly personae contributes to our understanding of the deeply embedded popular understanding of the witch-hunt as representing an irrational past in opposition to an enlightened present. Yet the men’s relationship with each other, and with witchcraft sceptics \u2013 the heroes of their studies \u2013 also demonstrates how their writings were part of a larger war against ‘unreason’. This Element thus lays bare the ways scholarly masculinity helped shape witchcraft historiography, a field of study often seen as dominated by feminist scholarship. Such meditation on past practice may foster reflection on contemporary models of history writing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Free PDF download here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be clear, The War on Witchcraft treats historical writing about the late medieval and early modern witchtrials, seen as an outbreak of “unreason.” From the publisher : Historians of the early modern witch-hunt often begin histories of their field with the theories propounded by Margaret Murray and Montague Summers in the 1920s. They overlook […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,4,29],"class_list":["post-12300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-history","tag-scholarship","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3co","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":283,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=283","url_meta":{"origin":12300,"position":0},"title":"More than a passing fad?\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More than a passing fad? Brooks Alexander of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (an \"anti-cult\" group) has a new book, Witchcraft Goes Mainstream It gets favorable notice from Jeffrey Burton Russell, perhaps one of the last of the hardline historians of the medieval and early modern witch trials, who treated at\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11755","url_meta":{"origin":12300,"position":1},"title":"“The Woman Who Inspired Wicca”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This popped up on Twitter recently: There is no conference that I know of, which may say something about how small a set of academics are interested in Wiccan history. Maybe we Pagan-studies types do not have anything new to say right now, because this issue has been covered pretty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"journalism\"","block_context":{"text":"journalism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=journalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/witch-cult-tweet.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":12300,"position":2},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagans and Museums","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE UPDATED DEADLINES AT BOTTOM Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicized Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson\u2019s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"museums\"","block_context":{"text":"museums","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=museums"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":939,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=939","url_meta":{"origin":12300,"position":3},"title":"Switzerland’s Last ‘Witch’ Exonerated","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A Swiss woman executed for witchcraft in 1782 is the subject of a new museum. A new book examines her case and calls for judicial exoneration. From Newsweek's article:In the hamlet of Mollis, population 3,000, a road the width of a single car was renamed Anna G\u00f6ldi Way for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11858,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11858","url_meta":{"origin":12300,"position":4},"title":"“Childish and Credulous Fantasy”: How the BBC Viewed Witchcraft in 1962","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Pop over to the BBC archive to watch presenter llan Whicker pontificate about witchcraft in a short television segment from Hallowee 1962. Among other non-information, Whicker trots out the bogus \"nine million witches executed\" figure from the Renaissance and Early Modern witch trials. He also interviews Cecil Williamson, Gerald Gardner's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/williamson.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/williamson.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/williamson.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8434,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8434","url_meta":{"origin":12300,"position":5},"title":"CFP: 2017 AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"All the calls for the 2017 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion are now online. The meeting itself will be held 18\u201321 November in Boston. The Pagan studies theme is \"Witch Hunts: Rhetorical, Historical and Contemporary.\" The term \u201cwitch hunt\u201d is used as a rhetorical strategy in contemporary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12302,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12300\/revisions\/12302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}