Daily Archives: 4 November 2015

Witchcraft and Emotions: Media and Cultural Meanings – Draft Programme Online, Registration Now Open

Witchcraft and Emotions: Media and Cultural Meanings
Graduate House, 220 Leicester Street, Carlton, The University of Melbourne
25-27 November, 2015

Registration now open: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/witchcraft-and-emotions/

Download the draft programme HERE.

Witchcraft is an intensely emotional crime. The crime of witchcraft fundamentally concerns the impact of emotional states on physical ones. Anger, envy or hate of one person towards another could manifest itself in a variety of physical ailments and even death. In early modern Europe, women’s passions and lusts were sometimes said to make them more prone to witchcraft than their male counterparts. It was not just the witch who was intensely emotional: the Devil could also play the role of jealous lover or violent master. So too the families, relations, friends, and sometimes the community as a whole, would be drawn into the complex web of emotional claim and counter claim from which developed accusations and condemnations of witchcraft.

Yet despite the path-breaking work of Lyndal Roper and Diane Purkiss on the emotional self-representation and imagination of accused witches and their accusers, an emotional history of witchcraft remains relatively unexplored. This conference seeks to bring together scholars from a number of different fields, including history, art history and anthropology, to probe further into the relationship between witchcraft and emotions through an inter-disciplinary perspective.

Confirmed speakers include: Victoria Burbank (Anthropology, University of Western Australia), Johannes Dillinger (History, Oxford Brookes), Iris Gareis (Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt), Malcolm Gaskill (History, University of East Anglia), Eliza Kent (University of New England), Isak Niehaus (Anthropology, Brunel University), Abaigéal Warfield, (History, University of Adelaide), Jan Machielsen (History, University of Oxford), Patricia Simons (Art History, University of Michigan), Julian Goodare (History, University of Edinburgh), Sarah Ferber (Anthropology, La Trobe University), Deborah Van Heekeren (Anthropology, Macquarie University), Charlotte-Rose Millar (History, University of Melbourne), Laura Kounine (History, Max Planck Institute Berlin), Jacqueline van Gent (History, University of Western Australia), Charles Zika (History, University of Melbourne) and Sarah Ferber (History, University of Wollongong).

The symposium will run from Wednesday 25th – Friday 27th November and will be held at Graduate House, 220 Leicester Street, Carlton. The conference dinner at Il Vicolo Carlton will be at 7pm on Wednesday the 25th and there will be a free, public film screening of the 1922 film ‘Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages’ at 7.30pm on Thursday the 26th in the Singapore Theatre (B120), The School of Melbourne Design, the University of Melbourne.

This symposium is the first of two, the second of which will be held in Berlin in June 2016.

Heckman Research Stipends at St. John’s University (MN) – Call For Applications

Heckman Stipends, made possible by the A.A. Heckman Endowed Fund, are awarded semi-annually. Up to 10 stipends in amounts up to $2,000 are available each year. Funds may be applied toward travel to and from Collegeville, housing and meals at Saint John’s University, and costs related to duplication of HMML’s microfilm or digital resources. The Stipend may be supplemented by other sources of funding but may not be held simultaneously with another HMML Stipend or Fellowship. Holders of the Stipend must wait at least two years before applying again.

The program is specifically intended to help scholars who have not yet established themselves professionally and whose research cannot progress satisfactorily without consulting materials to be found in the collections of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.

Applications:
Applications must be submitted by April 15 for residencies between July and December of the same year, or by November 15 for residencies between January and June of the following year.

Applicants are asked to provide:

  1. a letter of application with current contact information, the title of the project, length of the proposed residency at HMML and its projected dates, and the amount requested (up to $2,000)
  2. a description of the project to be pursued, with an explanation of how HMML’s resources are essential to its successful completion of the project; applicants are advised to be as specific as possible about which resources will be needed (maximum length: 1,000 words)
  3. an updated curriculum vitae
  4. a confidential letter of recommendation to be sent directly to HMML by an advisor, thesis director, mentor, or, in the case of postdoctoral candidates, a colleague who is a good judge of the applicant’s work

Please send all materials as email attachments to: fellowships@hmml.org, with “Heckman Stipend” in the subject line. Questions about the Stipends may be sent to the same address.