witchcraft

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• SOURCE: ABA Journal
  8/5/2022
  

  Civics Teacher and Students Help Win Exoneration for Last Convicted Witch in Massachusetts

  Carrie LaPierre of North Andover turned a project on the legislative process into an amendment to the state budget bill. Elizabeth Johnson's 1693 conviction was finally overturned. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  6/14/2022
  

  Where Witches Were Men: Magic in Early Modern Russia

  by Valerie Kivelson

  In Orthodox Russia, unlike Catholic and Protestant western Europe, the nature of hierarchy and power meant that the majority of people accused of witchcraft were men, and the popular image of a witch was male. 

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• SOURCE: BBC
  1/26/2022
  

  Catalonia Pardons Women Convicted of Witchcraft

  Witches were often blamed for the sudden death of children or for poor harvests, according to Pau Castell, a professor of modern history at the University of Barcelona.

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  1/1/2022
  

  Scotland to Pardon Thousands Executed as Witches

  "Until the Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1735, some 3,837 people were accused of the crime—the overwhelming majority of them women—with some two-thirds executed, more per head of population than anywhere else in Europe."

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  3/5/2021
  

  Women Used to Dominate the Beer Industry – Until the Witch Accusations Started Pouring In

  by Laken Brooks

  Male brewers seized on the conservative ideas of the Reformation to push women out of the brewing trade through accusations of witchery. Today's craft beer culture, unlike the home brewing of old, is male-dominated.

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  3/1/2021
  

  Writing Histories of Witchcraft in a Pandemic

  by Richard Tomzcak

  A course on witch trials, run remotely due to the pandemic, offered a chance to push students to examine new sources, write for the public, and consider how historical subjects acted in a climate of fear and suspicion not entirely different from our own.

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/29/2020
  

  When Democracy Ails, Magic Thrives

  by Samuel Clowes-Huneke

  A new book by historian Monica Black suggests that the irrational was never absent from the postwar order—and, moreover, that florid eruptions of mystical thinking often accompany periods of extreme political upheaval. 

• 
• SOURCE: Going Medieval
  7/30/2020
  

  On Sex with Demons

  by Eleanor Janega

  "The idea of having sex with demons or the devil... has a long and proud history. A concern about sleep sex demons traces at least as far back as Mesopotamian myth where we see the hero Gilgamesh’s father recorded on the Sumerian King List as Lilu, a demon who targets sleeping women, in 2400 BC."