{"id":12603,"date":"2021-11-19T14:43:37","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T21:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603"},"modified":"2021-11-19T14:43:37","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T21:43:37","slug":"interview-with-helen-berger-leading-scholar-of-paganism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Helen Berger, Leading Scholar of Paganism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Prof. Helen Berger<\/p><\/div>\n

At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions<\/em>, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism.<\/a><\/p>\n

Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day communities whose practitioners call themselves witches. Her first book, A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States<\/i><\/a> (University of South Carolina Press, 1999), was a landmark in the subject and was followed up with important studies such as Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States<\/i><\/a> (with Evan A. Leach and Leigh Shaffer, University of South Carolina Press, 2003), Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self<\/i> <\/a>(with Doug Ezzy, Rutgers University Press, 2007), and most recently Solitary Pagans: Contemporary Witches, Wiccans and Others Who Practice Alone<\/i><\/a> (University of South Carolina Press, 2019). Currently a Professor Emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania and an Affiliated Scholar at the Women\u2019s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, Berger is continuing to work on the modern Pagan milieu, exploring its relationships with far-right politics. She tells us about her career and her thoughts on the future of the academic study of modern Paganism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She explains how her interest in today’s Witches and Pagans grew from earlier research on the Salem Witch Trials and similar events. In the mid-1980s, she gave a series of lectures at the Boston Public Library \u2014 and realized who was in the audience.<\/p>\n

The audience for each of the lectures varied with some people who attended every week and others who came only for a particular lecture. One elderly woman with white hair always sat in the front row, listened intently, and asked interesting questions. I looked forward to seeing her there every week. At the final lecture, when I said what was then a surprising fact; Witches looked like everyone else. You could be living next door to, or working with, a Witch and not know it. She stopped me mid-lecture and asked, \u201care you saying there could be Witches in the room.\u201d As the average age of the participants had dropped significantly for this lecture, I offered that I thought there probably were Witches in the room. She stood up, turned around with her hands on her hips, and asked, \u201care there any Witches here?\u201d I think it is because she looked like the quintessential grandmother that a number of people raised their hands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing.<\/a> Helen Berger has also published a number of articles in The Pomegranate <\/em>as well as being one our most valuable peer-reviewers in the sociology of Paganism. Her 2015 article “An Outsider Inside: Becoming a Scholar of Contemporary Paganism<\/a>” reflected on some of the issues involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism. Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day communities whose practitioners call themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":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":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,103,299,325,4,333,29],"class_list":["post-12603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-massachusetts","tag-pagan-studies","tag-salem","tag-scholarship","tag-witch-trials","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3hh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":867,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=867","url_meta":{"origin":12603,"position":0},"title":"Teen Witches and Sociologists","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for Self, a sociological study of young Pagan Witches, will be shipping in a few days from Rutgers University Press.I have heard co-authors Helen Berger and Doug Ezzy give presentations from their research, which is excellent.From the Rutgers University Press catalog:As Helen A.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10799,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10799","url_meta":{"origin":12603,"position":1},"title":"A New Study of Solitary Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Solitary Pagans: Contemporary Witches, Wiccans, and Others Who Practice Alone is a new study from Helen A. Berger, a sociologist of religion who has been studying contemporary Paganism for decades. Her body of work is large enough now that future scholars will be returning to it again and again for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/solitary-pagans.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10197,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10197","url_meta":{"origin":12603,"position":2},"title":"“Solitary Pagans,” a New Academic Study","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the mid-1990s, Nancy Mostad, then the acquisitions editor at Llewellyn, told me that they estimated that 70 percent of purchasers of books on Paganism were solitaries.Hence the immense success -- by their standards -- of Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Meanwhile, sociologist of religion\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":[]},{"id":5,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5","url_meta":{"origin":12603,"position":3},"title":"Who and Where are the Pagans?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 8, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Sociologist Helen A. Berger, author of A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States, has a new book coming out in July, written together with Evan Leach and Leigh Shaffer. The title is Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":515,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=515","url_meta":{"origin":12603,"position":4},"title":"More Crazy SeasonThe Crazy Season:\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"More Crazy SeasonThe Crazy Season: the weeks leading up to Hallowe'en when the news media rediscover Witchcraft.Witchcraft and Magic: North America, edited by Helen Berger and mentioned here earlier, has arrived.One contributor, the sociologist Tanice Foltz, writes on \"The Commodification of Witchcraft\" (a favorite academic topic, also addressed by other\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1203,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1203","url_meta":{"origin":12603,"position":5},"title":"The Pagan Census, revisited","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Three researchers are working to update Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States, originally published in 2003.Helen Berger, one of the researchers, writes, \"This survey builds on an earlier one completed over twenty years ago, primarily in the United States, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1570034885","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12603","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=12603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12605,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12603\/revisions\/12605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}