‘I am That Very Witch’: On The Witch, Feminism, and Not Surviving Patriarchy

While contemporary discussions about witchcraft include reinterpretations and feminist reclamations, early modern accusations contained no such complexity. It is this historical witch as misogynist nightmare that the film, The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015), expresses so effectively. Within the film, the very patriarchal structures that decry witchcraft – the Puritan church from which the family exiles itself, the male headship to which the parents so desperately cling, the insistence, in the face of repeated failure, on the viability of the isolated nuclear family unit – are the same structures that inevitably foreclose the options of the lead character, Thomasin

Black Panther as Spirit Trip

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler. This review analyzes engagement with the movie as a religious experience and considers some political implications of both its storyline and reception. In particular, the piece focuses on constructions of race, especially in relationship to Africa and African Americans, as well as practical tensions around commodifying dissent

In the Study of the Witch: Women, Shadows, and the Academic Study of Religions

This article examines historically competing categories of magic and religion and their gendered traces in the history of religious studies. On one hand, we have a genealogy that traces the term, “magic”, back to an early modern European Christianity trying to understand itself through contrast with an imagined heresy that comes to be personified with a woman’s face. On the other, we have contemporary political and religious communities that use the identification as Witches to reverse this version of dichotomous Christian gaze and legitimize religious difference, which also comes to be symbolized by a female body. Between these historical moments we have the beginning of the academic study of religion, the theoretical turn in which Christian-dominant scholarship comes to see itself on a continuum with, rather than opposed to, different religions, as first characterized by cultural evolution theories about the origins of religion. Especially given the field’s theological roots, examining the constructed relationships between religion and magic, both of which represent crucial foci for early theorists, through the analytical lens of gender, which does not, provides opportunities to surface implicit assumptions of the current field about what is and is not worth studying

Gold is the New Black: Race, the Academic Study of Religion, and The Golden Bough

1 video file. ms150-40-024_zwissler-laurel_gold-new-black_2023-02-12.mp4 .mp4 623.45 MB 653,737,519This project investigates Frazer’s influence within both the academic study of religion and new religious movements, such as contemporary Paganism and New Age, with focus on his deployment of religion to code cultural difference and race. My paper draws on interconnecting hierarchies of class, geography, culture, and religion to create mutually reinforcing signifiers of alien others. Difference in one category is understood as both cause and symptom of difference in the others. Thus religious difference, in and of itself, can serve as both sign of and cypher for racial difference, while also obfuscating racial anxieties under the cover of theological disagreement or cultural critique. As the academic study of religion continues to reckon with its entanglements with colonial white supremacy, and as new religious movements struggle with traditions of cultural appropriation, Frazer offers a stark example of a self-identified scientific and descriptive project that is clearly not. The point is not that Frazer is an aberration or a failure, but that he has done us the favor of throwing into relief racial dynamics across the academic study of religion more broadly. Additional Authors: Shaking the Tree, Breaking the Bough: Frazer's Golden Bough at 100 (Conference); Tully, Caroline Jane; Budin, Stephanie Lynn; University of Melbourne

Bulletproof Love : Luke Cage (2016) and Religion

There are many ways to think about religion and popular culture. One method is to ask where and when we see what might be commonly understood as “religious tradition(s)” explicitly on display. Another is to think about superhero narratives themselves as “religious”, using this term as a conceptual tool for categorizing and thereby better understanding particular dimensions of human experience. This article takes a variety of approaches to understanding religion in relation to the recent television series LUKE CAGE (Netflix, US 2016). These approaches take their hermeneutical cues from a range of disciplines, including studies of the Bible; Hip Hop; gender; Black Theology; African American religion; and philosophy. The results of this analysis highlight the polysemic nature of popular culture in general, and of superhero stories in particular. Like religious traditions themselves, the show is complex and contradictory: it is both progressive and reactionary; emphasizes community and valorizes an individual; critiques and endorses Christianity; subverts and promotes violence. Depending on the questions asked, LUKE CAGE (2016) provides a range of very different answers