CFP: “Some Conjectures” and Some Correctives: Public Witches and Private Agendas

This panel will be part of the upcoming Society of Early Americanists' 10th Biannual Convention to be held in Tulsa, OK,

March 2-4, 2017.

To apply, please send a 100-200 word abstract and a brief bio (including your institutional affiliation) to:

Michele Lise Tarter,  tarter@tcnj.edu  

Deadline for your proposal:  August 20, 2016

“Some Conjectures” and Some Correctives: Public Witches and Private Agendas

In Witches of the Atlantic World (2000), Elaine Breslaw writes that her anthology was compiled to “examine what witchcraft means and has meant in the context of a particular society, both as the people involved defined it for themselves and as scholars have interpreted their actions.” This panel revisits Breslaw’s emphasis on the messy intersection between historical instances of self-definition and scholarly reconsiderations of witchcraft in early America.

We seek proposals that interrogate public “conjectures” about witches and witchcraft in order to correct persistent misunderstandings about witchcraft’s meaning in early America, particularly the hegemonic standing of Salem as the ur-text of American witchcraft studies. The panel’s central query, then, is “How do public, institutional constructions of witchcraft intersect with private or personal experiences—as a witch, as a prosecutor, a witness, an accuser, a bystander, a reader, an artist?”

Papers might consider, among related subjects, some of the following topics:

• the role of powerful texts such as the Malleus Maleficarum in informing early American witchcraft experiences;

• the influence of the Mathers’ writing on witchcraft beyond New England;

• lesser-known, or unfamiliar witchcraft events (outside English colonies);

• the constructions—and challenges to them—of racial identities in the figure of the witch;

• the problematic relationship between healing and witchcraft;

• the visual rhetoric of witchcraft texts;

• the portrayal of marginalized groups—e.g. Quakers, prisoners, even animals—in the propaganda of publicized witchcraft;

• witch hunting as a ritual.

For more information on the SEA 2017 conference, please visit:     https://sea2017.wordpress.com/