A Global History of Witch-Hunts, Witch Trials, and the Suppression of Indigenous Religion
Instructor note: This course treats witch-hunting — from the Alpine trials of the 1400s to sorcery killings in Papua New Guinea today — as a recurring pattern in which a dominant religious/political order criminalizes rival cosmologies, folk healers, and indigenous ritual specialists, using “witchcraft” as the legal and theological category through which that suppression is carried out. Students should also engage the historiographical debate over this framing (see Week 1 and Week 6): most professional historians (Hutton, Levack, Briggs) reject Margaret Murray’s old thesis that European witches were literally practitioners of a surviving pagan religion, while accepting that the trials functioned to police folk religion, midwifery, and non-elite spiritual authority. Both positions are read so students can form their own judgment.
Master Reading List — Texts on the Global Experience of Witch Trials
Historiographical foundations / methodology
• Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (2017)
• Wolfgang Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History (2004)
• Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (4th ed.)
• Malcolm Gaskill, Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction
Europe
• Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials
• Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons
• Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany
• Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors
• Julian Goodare, The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context
• Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland
• Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles
• Heinrich Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum (Mackay translation, with critical apparatus)
Colonial Americas
• Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare
• Emerson Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft
• Pablo José de Arriaga, The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru
• Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies
• Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches
• Serge Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico
• Louis S. Warren, God’s Red Son
Modern Wicca / Pagan Revival and Contested Memory
• Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon
• Philip Heselton, Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration
• Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft
• Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (primary source; read alongside Hutton’s critique)
Africa
• Silvia Federici, “Women, Witch-Hunting and Enclosures in Africa Today”
• Adam Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa
South Asia
• Govind Kelkar & Dev Nathan, “Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation”
• Soma Chaudhuri, Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India
Melanesia / Pacific
• Miranda Forsyth & Richard Eves, eds., Talking It Through
• Philip Gibbs, “Practices and Beliefs Related to Sorcery and Witchcraft in Papua New Guinea”