Format: Mémoire

« This thesis is an exploration of witches, as depicted in entertainment media. “Queering Witches: A Queer Feminist Exploration of Witches in Media” analyzes the way history has contributed to the reinforcement of stereotypes about witches using queer theory and feminist analysis. “Queering Witches” also offers a broad view of the intersectionality inherent to the way witches are presented in media, specifically delving into definitions of witches, Satanists, witches of color, and the intersection of witches and the queer/LGBTQIA+ community. The introduction of feminist analysis and queer theory emphasizes the way stereotypes about witches and performance of power have been demonized by society in much the same way as the performance of gender and sexuality have been demonized. » [Résumé]

« Witches have long captivated the public’s imagination as symbols of both the oppression and liberation of women. This tension between control and liberation is precisely why the witch is such a powerful symbol for feminism. This thesis explores how gendered representations of witches in popular culture index the status/strength/struggles of feminism at any given time. This thesis is a feminist rhetorical analysis of one witch in particular: Sabrina Spellman. Originally a 1962 Archie comic character, then the 1996 live-action series Sabrina the Teenage Witch starring Melissa Joan Hart, Sabrina returned again in the 2018 Netflix reboot the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina staring Kiernan Shipka. Due to Sabrina’s rich history and persistence, she serves as a reflection of feminism at different points in time. This thesis explores the rhetorical strategies through which Sabrina is depicted as a symbol for feminist liberation, but also the ways patriarchal control is enforced in each of these texts to limit her power. » [Résumé]

« This thesis works to understand the relationships witches and conjurors have with the film and television depictions of them. Employing the method of film critique, I argue that the witch stands as a cultural symbol in the US of women and femmes with power, and that their stories serve as lessons to these populations about what it means to be an acceptable woman or femme, while simultaneously creating and perpetuating stereotypes of magic practitioners. Then, using the combination of hashtag ethnography, in-person and video interviewing and internet surveys, I argue that #witchblr and #witchesofcolor, as well as the space of an interview with another practitioner, serves as a counterspace where the counternarratives against oppression, of resistance, and of personal identity work can take place. I connect the language practitioners use to describe themselves and witches and conjurors in film and television to the embracing and distancing marginalized communities engage in when crafting their identities around stereotyped notions of their group, and argue for the need for a simpler, softer, more diverse witchcraft in United States film and television. » [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]

« This thesis investigates the relationship between the body of the witch in popular culture and attitudes and assumptions about the female body. This study was conducted through textual analysis of several popular films and television shows about witches. This analysis is structured around three core archetypes of femininity: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, examining how each of the three archetypes preserve stereotypes about women and how witches can subvert or reinforce those stereotypes. Using the theory of abjection as a foundation, this thesis argues that witches have a strong relationship to abject femininity and can therefore expose the anxieties and fears about female bodies in a patriarchal culture. This is not a comprehensive study of witches in popular culture, and further research into the intersections of gender and race, sexuality, and ability is needed to form any definite conclusions. This study is merely an exploration of female archetypes and how the female body is conceived through the witch’s body in popular culture. » [Résumé]

« The site of this thesis is the witch’s house. A dissident and agitator in society, the witch and her respective home are both grounds for resistance and a place of refuge. The Witch’s House is a playful and experimental investigation of feminist architectural principles explored through narrative, writing, and drawing.

Designed as an antithesis to the societal frameworks that continue to constrain women’s potential – both metaphorically and spatially –, the witch’s home is a speculative architecture. From a place of hopefulness and feminist values this thesis furnishes a safe space for intelligent, old, wise, and sexual women who are unafraid to dislocate systems of oppression.

I assemble fragments of knowledge – in the form of suppressed women’s history, feminist artwork, critical architecture theory of sexuality and space, and theories of abjection – to weave an architectural bricolage of the witch’s house in three forms.

Drawing from the dominant and disparaging depictions of the witch figure in Western and Northern European 19th century fairy tale compendiums, I identified the cave, forest, and hut as three typologies of the witch’s house. I transform these threadbare clichés of the witch’s home into textured narratives centering the perspective of women’s resistance as complex spatial relationships intertwined with social, ecological, economic, and spiritual implications.

Through this method of assembling I deconstruct an authority to forge a new understanding of enclosure, materiality, connection to nature, tectonics, and domesticity that is rooted in women’s innate and ancestral power.

The Witch’s House is partitioned into four parts. Part 1 distinguishes the witch as three characters: the wise witch – the untold narrative of women’s power and their role as seers, diviners, and healers; the historical witch – as documented in European texts and illustrations; and the feminist witch – who has been reclaimed as an icon in feminist literature and art. Part 2 explores the intersection of this witch figure with the typification of the house as a site for critical architectural discourse and analysis. Within this section I explore the methodologies of my work while substantiating the role reading, drawing, and writing played throughout the design process. Part 3 presents designs for three distinct houses: the Pyre House, the Weaver House, and The Cave House, each comprising a set of drawings, a collection of zines containing treatises towards a feminist architecture, and reflection on the design process. Following these designs, Part 4 is an appendix of all the zines that supplement the drawings, serving as a library of resources in defense of the witch’s house.

I invite any who wish to traverse The Witch’s House to ramble and tramp in no certain order through the pages – flipping back and forth between drawings, zines, and writing – creating their own narrative territory of the witch and her house. » [Résumé]

« In this paper, I explore the ways in which the radical feminist activist group W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) uses the figure of the witch to establish a collective identity as a social movement by using the theoretical framework of identity work. I first draw on the existing scholarship surrounding the history of witchcraft, witch persecution, and radical feminism, and I then apply this history in conjunction with identity work theory to analyze the public persona of the recently revived W.I.T.C.H., specifically the group that brought this movement back: W.I.T.C.H. PDX. By looking at the strategies that W.I.T.C.H. employs in their protest, social media presence, website, and interviews, I examine how W.I.T.C.H. has historically and currently built a collective identity despite being a loosely-connected network of local groups. » [Résumé]

« Ce mémoire explore le concept de la sagefemme-sorcière dans le contexte de la masculinisation et la médicalisation du processus de l’accouchement. En m’appuyant sur le roman The Birth House, par Ami McKay, je développerai trois chapitres qui traitent de l’histoire du domaine obstétrique, la chasse aux sorcières, ainsi que l’historique de l’archétype de la sorcière dans un contexte féministe afin d’illuminer la caractérisation de Dora et Miss Babineau en tant que des véritables sorcières, malgré qu’elle ne pratiquent pas de magie dans l’histoire. De plus, ce mémoire examinera les implications féministes de l’adoption littéraire de l’archétype de la sorcière en ce qui concerne la culture populaire et le climat politique actuel en Amérique du Nord grâce à l’adoption d’une perspective historique afin d’illustrer l’importance culturelle non seulement du roman, mais des personnages qui y habitent. » [Résumé]