Authors: Elizabeth Reis, Diane L. Murphy
ISBN-13: 9780842025775, ISBN-10: 0842025774
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Sr Books
Date Published: January 1998
Edition: 1st Edition
Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America is a collection of twelve articles that explore crucial events in the history of witch-hunting and its demonization of women in American and American women's own use of witchcraft as a source of identity and strength, as well as the complicated relationship between the two. Beginning with the accused 'witches' of colonial America, Spellbound extends its focus through the nineteenth century to explore women's involvement with alternative spiritualities, and culminates with examinations of the contemporary feminist neopagan and Goddess movements.
Informative and engaging.
Introduction | ||
1 | The Economic Basis of Witchcraft | 1 |
2 | Female Speech and Other Demons: Witchcraft and Wordcraft in Early New England | 25 |
3 | Gender and the Meanings of Confession in Early New England | 53 |
4 | Dark Eve | 75 |
5 | "The Devil Will Roar in Me Anon": The Possession of Martha Roberson, Boston, 1741 | 99 |
6 | Seneca Possessed: Colonialism, Witchcraft, and Gender in the Time of Handsome Lake | 121 |
7 | Sojourner Truth's Religion in Her Moment of Pentecostalism and Witchcraft | 145 |
8 | "Hoodoo? God Do": African American Women and Contested Spirituality in the Spiritual Churches of New Orleans | 157 |
9 | Red Lilac of the Cayugas: Traditional Indian Laws and Culture Conflict in a Witchcraft Trial in Buffalo, New York, 1930 | 183 |
10 | Witchcraft as Goddess Religion | 201 |
11 | Affinities and Appropriations in Feminist Spirituality | 221 |
12 | In Whose Image? Misogynist Trends in the Construction of Goddess and Woman | 247 |
Suggested Readings | 269 | |
About the Contributors | 275 |