Master
2024/2025
History of magic
Type:
Elective course (Global and Regional History)
Area of studies:
History
Delivered by:
Department of History
When:
2 year, 1 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of one campus
Instructors:
Maria Starun
Master’s programme:
Global and Regional History
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
3
Course Syllabus
Abstract
This course will examine the social history of magic in the broad context of world history. Attention will be focused on social aspects relevant to different regions in the history of magic and witchcraft. For their study, the main concepts in the course will be gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. With the rise of rationalism and secular tendencies, it is these aspects of identity that have become key to accusations of witchcraft/witchcraft. We will therefore consider how the witch trials changed gender relations in European society; how the perception of non-Europeans was conditioned by rationalizing thinking; how magic became a legal legal argument for discrimination against particular groups; how witches and witches themselves dealt with the new reality in different regions of the world; and in what contexts the social rehabilitation of witches took place in modern times. The course will focus on the history of these transformations, which are not really confined to the realm of magic, witchcraft, and the occult, but which have been totally penetrating and changing social relations, legal concepts, ways of seeing justice, and power structures. Much of the course is a seminar class, and virtually all of the literature for the class is in English. Both Russian and English language skills are required for the course.
Learning Objectives
- формирование у студентов представлений о потенциальных возможностях методологии социальной истории в области исследования магических практик и представлений различных обществ
- ознакомление студентов с основными понятиями в области истории магии, а также понимание основных социальных процессов, способствующих её трансформациям в новое и новейшее время
Expected Learning Outcomes
- be able to discuss the basic concepts and history of the development of magic
- be able to see the continuity and interdependence between the magical and the scientific
Course Contents
- Witchcraft in history and anthropology
- Magic in Non-western Europe
- Colonization and the manufacturing of "alienness"
- The magical origins of the scientific revolution
- Occultism as a modern magic
- Magic and Self
- Magic and modern economy
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- Desperate magic : the moral economy of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Russia, Kivelson, V., 2013
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Francis Bacon: from magic to science, Rossi, P., 2009
- Magic, science, and religion in early modern Europe, Waddell, M. A., 2021