Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America<\/em><\/a> around the seminar table.<\/p>\nBecause I teach English rather than history of religion, not too many people had known about it. I did thank him in the preface for his support of my unconventional scholarship, however. But I had to chuckle too, because some of these students are my students this semester too.<\/p>\n
I don’t exactly wear my pentagram on my sleeve at the university. I am what I am (and they ought to give the department some kind of diversity points benefit for having me), but I don’t advertise.<\/p>\n
Consider, for instance, my student C____, with whom I worked closely on an important project over the summer, one that might further her career. She’s bright and willing to do far more than the minimum work required. She is also more or less of a fundamentalist Christian. It would not surprise me if she thinks that the universe was created in six 24-hour days. But I liked having her in class all the same.<\/p>\n
If she knew I was in the Craft, would it spoil the professor-student relationship? All she would have to do is Google me, but students are generally incurious about their professors’ lives, I think.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, another student who was working on an interview-based article in a magazine-writing class told me that if her first interviewee did not work out, she could interview “a friend who was Pagan.”<\/p>\n
“Let’s stick with Plan A,” I said. <\/p>\n
And, meanwhile, a department colleague asked me if Her Hidden Children<\/em> was for sale in the university bookstore.<\/p>\nDuh! I had completely forgotten about the display shelves of books by faculty members.<\/p>\n
So I printed out the page from AltaMira Press’s online catalog and took it to the bookstore manager.<\/p>\n
Today she emailed me: It’s back-ordered until December.<\/p>\n
I should be glad, since that seems to indicate that it is selling. Hope so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My department chair (that’s how we say it in Academia to avoid the sexism of “chairman,” even though it makes him sound like an ornate piece of furniture) recently invited me to speak to one of his classes. To establish my credentials, he handed a copy of my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-c3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":575,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=575","url_meta":{"origin":747,"position":0},"title":"In dreaming, truth?A couple of\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"In dreaming, truth?A couple of nights ago I dreamt I was talking with the dean of the university's library, with whom I have generally had a good collegial relationship.Teaching, I told her in the dream, was like getting married and divorced twice in every year.On waking, I thought that that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2244,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2244","url_meta":{"origin":747,"position":1},"title":"Wendy Griffin Named Cherry Hill Dean","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Cherry Hill Seminary has named Wendy Griffin of California State University, Long Beach as its new academic dean. They made a good choice. I have worked with Wendy for several years on\u00a0 the American Academy of Religion's Contemporary Pagan Studies steering committee, which she co-chaired from 2005-10. She and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wendy Griffin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/WendyGriffinAAR2-119x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=936","url_meta":{"origin":747,"position":2},"title":"The Dream and the Job","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the dream last night I was at some kind of Protestant Christian youth camp, headed by the stereotypical big, extroverted, 30-something youth minister.A teenaged girl was supposed to be baptized, but the minister had to leave suddenly, so he asked me to baptize her. His request presented two problems:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teaching\"","block_context":{"text":"teaching","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teaching"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6769,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6769","url_meta":{"origin":747,"position":3},"title":"Help a Russian Scholar of Paganism Attend the AAR","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Most scholars who attend the American Academy of Religion annual meeting have their travel and hotel rooms paid for, at least partly, by their institutions. Some, however, don't receive such support. Dmitry Galtsin, a researcher in the Rare Books Department of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Galtsin\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Russia\"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=russia"},"img":{"alt_text":"galtsin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/galtsin1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2623,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2623","url_meta":{"origin":747,"position":4},"title":"Why Did I Agree to Do this Workshop?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I have spent much of today being nervous about the weather (warm, dry, windy) while yet working on a workshop presentation on nature religion. Nature is making me nervous. Ironic, eh? Even though M. and I have been back in our house for a week, we are still jumpy. After\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fire and law enforcement people gather as the Sand Guch Fire spreads.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/fire-web-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11149,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11149","url_meta":{"origin":747,"position":5},"title":"Don’t Follow the Lights across the Moor, said the Monk, or Why We Learn Nothing New about Fairies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The famous American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842\u20131910) was also a paranormal researcher, chiefly in the area of Spiritualism and mediumship. Toward the end of his life, he wrote about a problem that still vexes ufologists, ghost-hunters, and everyone else engaging \"the phenomenon.\" He starts by speaking of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/william-james-in-brazil.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","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=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}