Are you starting to plan your summer and are not sure where you will be or whether you can commit to a fully in-person summer class? Come and join me for this bewitching asynchronous online class!
To ensure class community, our virtual classroom will connect you with your classmates. Several features and interactive sessions enhance your online experience to ensure that you interact and connect with your peers.
The fascination with witches developed in parallel in different cultures and languages and is unbroken as the recent iterations of Japanese anime and Disney live-action movies show. Due to the “power to create life”–connected with menstruation and birth–women have been associated with special powers in different cultures and centuries as already one of the very first artworks (the so-called Venus of Willendorf, from around 28,000-25,000 BCE) illustrates. Exploring witch narratives means exploring gender perceptions and constructions. This class explores gender constructions based on how women have been associated with special powers in different cultures and languages with a special focus on pre-modern literature and modern pop culture. This course discusses the demonization of femininity as well as the fascination with it through the concept of ascribing special power to women. With witchcraft as the focal point, this class explores the perception of the female as well as the two central poles of understanding the world in the medieval and pre-modern world: religion and magic. We will explore how witchcraft has been narrated and explored in literature as well as in art, discussing pre-modern images of women including the age of witch trials, a dark period of fear, and defamation.
A-Term (5 credits, VLPA, DIV)
Please feel free to contact Dr. Annegret Oehme, oehme@uw.edu, if you have any questions or concerns!
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