Format: Mémoire

« This thesis examines U.S. popular culture from 1950-1969 and the witch myth via horror films, newspapers, and within the Bewitched series. This research makes it clear that there is a difference in representing the witch myth by race. This is shown by first establishing American media’s representation of the imagined Black women’s witchcraft named Voodoo. Black voodoo queens were not only maligned in the news and film but also these accusations were deadly. In contrast, in the 1960s with the development of the women’s liberation movement the witch archetype in the U.S. media shifted to previous witch tropes similar to the tropes illustrated in the Malleus Maleficarum. These witch figures were disparaged but, it was not as extreme as the insidious depiction of Black women. Lastly, one of the most famous witch-forward piece of media in this period, Bewitched, highlighted witch tropes as synonymous to women agency but, white-washed and sanitized Black women’s role in witchcraft. » [Résumé]

« Historically, being accused of witchcraft meant death (Baker, 2015; Demos, 2008; Ehrenreich & English, 2010). More recently, identifying as a witch means living with a stigmatized and often concealed identity (Reece, 2016; Tejeda, 2015). Despite the injurious effects of stigmatization, such as discrimination in the workplace, isolation from one’s family, and increased subjective anxiety (Reece, 2016; Tejeda, 2015), individuals are increasingly identifying as witches in the United States. The most current estimate is that upwards of 1.5 million North Americans identify as such— though there is no official census to know for sure (Bosker, 2020; Fearnow, 2018). The motivations driving the increase remain unclear due to the narrower inquiry of extant research in which witches are often styled as white, suburbanite, middle-class, college-educated, “nature-worshipping” individuals who are predominately female. This description stems from feminist and religious studies which explore the sociopolitical underpinnings of “witch” as a politically oriented identity, the psychosocial benefits of witchcraft as a “feminist spirituality,” and on more bounded, ethnographic accounts of European-rooted “Neopagan” sects, such as Gardnerian Wicca.

However, while partly true, this portrait of identity, beliefs, and practices does not accurately represent the majority, nor the diversity, of currently practicing witches as it largely excludes the specific perspectives of witches of color, male, and gender-fluid witches. In the summer of 2020, I interviewed a diverse group of witches in New Orleans, Louisiana to explore what motivates individuals to adopt the identifier “witch” as part of their identity. In this thesis, I apply a cultural model approach to both explore the question of motivation and provide a more temporally appropriate, finer-grained understanding of witches as a diverse group. » [Résumé]

« This paper is a historiographical analysis of Margaret Alice Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), examining her thesis, the influence it has had on the study of the witch trials and its reception among historians, folklorists, and anthropologists, among others. Over the course of several articles and three monographs, Murray advanced a thesis that the witch trials of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries served as a lens through which the continuing practice of pre-Christian pagan fertility cults was revealed in predominantly rural European societies. She was granted a platform through the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1929 which brought her theories to a broad public audience. Murray’s definition of the “Dianic” cult of the witches has held a lasting place in discussions of the history of witchcraft and neo-pagan religions; the fact that many texts on witchcraft still dedicate time to refuting her thesis stands as a testament to the influence she wielded and its lingering presence in popular history. The Witch-Cult has enjoyed a long afterlife in an array of academic bibliographies, and its influence on Gerald Gardner and the ensuing connection to the creation of Wicca remains a contentious point to both historians and believers. » [Résumé]

« Using hermeneutic, alchemical hermeneutic, and heuristic methodologies, this research explores the unconscious drives and archetypal energies that are behind orthorexia nervosa. A depth psychological perspective suggests that eating disorders are an inability to hold the tension of opposites between conscious and unconscious parts of self. Offering a new conceptualization of orthorexia, this thesis explores the following questions: How might attachment trauma and a negative mother complex contribute to and manifest in the female’s development of orthorexia? What role in the manifestation and healing of orthorexia might the archetype of the Witch play? Rather than focusing solely on the orthorexic’s perfectionism and lack of control, as in most previous research, this thesis explores the more nuanced, unconscious layers of the orthorexic’s psyche, seeing the positive and negative aspects of the orthorexic’s search to reconnect with the inner feminine through the help of the archetypal witch. » [Résumé]

« The focus of this thesis are two recent novels featuring witches: Chloé Delaume’s Les Sorcières de la République(The Witches of the Republic, 2016) and Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies (2020). The first is a futuristic dystopia set in 2062, during the witch trial of the Sibyl of Cumae. The second is a work of historical fiction based on witch trial records and set in seventeenth-century Finnmark (Norway). Both are feminist novels, and both emphasize the political valence of the witch as a gendered figure. This figure emerged from the misogyny of early modern demonology but acquired its contemporary contours through second-wave feminism, which seized on the witch as an emblem of feminine power and solidarity against patriarchal oppression. Delaume’s Les Sorcières de la République and Hargrave’s The Mercies engage directly with this complex historical legacy, either by “correcting” the documentary record left behind by demonologists, or by underscoring the shortcomings of the political ideals embraced by second-wave feminists. » [Résumé]

« Cette recherche présente une critique politique actuelle de l’épistémologie occidentale contemporaine héritière de Hegel et de Nietzsche à travers la critique féministe du point de vue situé et de la théorie du Care. Sous la prémisse commune d’un lien fondateur réciproque entre l’expérience et la connaissance, comment peut-on comprendre le dépassement de la métaphysique et le dépassement de l’oppression comme deux faces d’un même enjeu? La critique féministe des systèmes de domination et la découverte philosophique de l’absence de fondements métaphysiques absolus pour la connaissance apparaissent comme deux questions qui se rejoignent. L’oppression fonctionne avec la métaphysique parce qu’il s’agit de la stratégie employée par une part de l’humanité pour tenter d’abolir la réalité de la souffrance en effaçant l’existence qui la connaît puisqu’elle la subit et la soulage. L’abolition de l’oppression ne vise pas seulement à libérer les opprimé-e-s, mais à libérer tout le monde de la peur en acceptant l’instabilité, la souffrance et la mort comme part de l’existence que nous créons et comme élément du bien-être que nous construisons. Face à la question du dépassement de la métaphysique, une telle compréhension du phénomène de l’oppression répond au gouffre laissé par la perte des absolus. Le dépassement de la métaphysique ne nous laisse plus devant un vide froid et désespéré si nous réhabilitons en nous-mêmes la vie sensible capable de bien-être et de souffrance, de guérison et de transformation. » [Résumé]

« In The Crucible Arthur Miller uses tropes of female characters, Abigail and Tituba, to tell a story of male heroism. In the process, he dismisses and appropriates the true stories of women who suffered during the Salem witch trials for his own political and personal gain. In this thesis, I argue that Miller’s appropriation and sexualization of women continues into contemporary popular culture depictions of the Salem witch trials including the movie adaptation of The Crucible and the television shows Salem and American Horror Story: Coven. These depictions appropriate and sexualize women’s stories in order to fulfill the male gaze. This thesis also explores how three contemporary women playwrights are writing new plays that address the sexism of Arthur Miller, show how The Crucible perpetuates abuse, and encourage women to confront sexism by creating their own works about the Salem trials. These plays are Abigail by Sarah Tuft, John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower, and Becky Nurse of Salem by Sarah Ruhl. Finally, I argue that in order to have a true feminist redemption of the Salem witch trials in popular culture, there must be more creative and scholarly analysis of Tituba, a woman of color who has been most silenced in these depictions. » [Résumé]

« This research examines the nexus of witchcraft and early modern healthcare. It draws on witchcraft studies and history of medicine to frame witchcraft as a public health crisis originating in, and investigated through, misogynistic medical ideologies. This research began primarily as an attempt to answer lingering questions of gender discrepancy in predominance of female executions. By examining the witch-panics of the 1640s through early modern medical discourses, this thesis contributes to understanding the physiological origins of witchcraft. Its findings provide the intersection of medical history and the gendered body as a cohesive framework for the dominant discourses in early modern English witchcraft scholarship. It engages with traditional historiographical narratives of witchcraft largely dominated by socio-economic and gender dynamics of daily life in a tumultuous period of English history. It utilizes sources from medical literature, witchcraft treatises, pamphlet testimony records, statistical data, as well as the diaries and reports of early modern contemporaries. The study demonstrates the witch-panics possessed an emphatically environmental dimension. This consisted of century-long concerns over public health instigated by humanity’s sins: worsening mortality crises, rampant endemic diseases, violent religious conflicts, and crop failures. These disasters implicated human sin at the root of these catastrophes. By interrogating the physiological weaknesses characterizing the female body, this work situates witches as covert carriers of sin and harbingers of illness. This understanding shaped all levels of English witchcraft investigation within notions of public health and disease. Witchcraft is examined vis-à-vis burgeoning English public health discourses, the medicalized misogyny informing the witch-figure in popular European culture, and the investigative and protective roles of the body in East Anglian witch investigations. » [Résumé]