Stories about witches are by their nature stories about the most basic and profound of human experiences-healing, sex, violence, tragedies, aging, death, and encountering the mystery and magic of the unknown. It is no surprise, then, that witches loom large in our cultural imaginations. In academia, studies of witches rarely emerge from scholars who are themselves witches and/or embedded in communities of witchcraft practitioners. The Witch Studies Reader brings together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners who examine witchcraft from a critical decolonial feminist perspective that decenters Europe and departs from exoticizing and pathologizing writing on witchcraft in the global South. The authors show how witches are keepers of suppressed knowledges, builders of new futures, exemplars of praxis, and theorists in their own right. Throughout, they account for the vastly different national, political-economic, and cultural contexts in which “the witch” is currently being claimed and repudiated. Offering a pathbreaking transnational feminist examination of witches and witchcraft that upends white supremacist, colonial, patriarchal knowledge regimes, this volume brings into being the interdisciplinary field of feminist witch studies.

Contributors. Maria Amir, Ruth Asiimwe, Bernadette Barton, Ethel Brooks, Shelina Brown, Ruth Charnock, Soma Chaudhuri, Carolyn Chernoff, Saira Chhibber, Simon Clay, Krystal Cleary, Adrianna L. Ernstberger, Tina Escaja, Laurie Essig, Marcelitte Failla, D Ferrett, Marion Goldman, Jaime Hartless, Margaretha Haughwout, Patricia Humura, Apoorvaa Joshi, Govind Kelkar, Oliver Kellhammer, AyÇa Kurtoğlu, Helen Macdonald, Isabel Machado, Brandy Renee McCann, Dev Nathan, Mary Jo Neitz, Amy Nichols-Belo, Allison (or AP) Pierce, Emma Quilty, Anna Rogel, Karen Schaller, Jacquelyn Marie Shannon, Shashank Shekhar Sinha, Gabriella V. Smith, Nathan Snaza, Shannon Hughes Spence, Eric Steinhart, Morena Tartari, Nicole Trigg, Katie Von Wald, Tushabe wa Tushabe, Jane Ward
 

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction to the Reader: Manifesting Witch Studies / Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward  1
I. The Colonial Encounter
1. Witchcraft in My Community: Healing Sex and Sexuality / Tushabe Wa Tushabe, Patricia Humura, and Ruth Asiimwe  23
2. “What Is a Witch?”: Tituba’s Subjunctive Challenge / Nathan Snaza
3. Irish Feminist Witches: Using Witchcraft and Activism to Heal from Violence and Trauma / Shannon Hughes Spence  46
4. Whose Craft?: Contentions in Open and Closed Practice in Contemporary Witchcraft(s) / Apoorva Joshi and Ethel Brooks  60
II. Lineages of Healing
5.  “You Deserve, Baby!”:  Spiritual Co-creation, Black Witches, and Feminism / Marcelitte Failla  75
6. Resurrecting Granny: A Brief Excavation of Appalachian Folk Magic / Brandy Renee McCann  90
7.  “Some Decks May Be Stacked against Us but This Deck Is Ours”:  Justice-Centered Tarot in and against the New Age / Krystal Cleary  105
8. Ecstatic Desires: Queerness and the Witch’s Body / Simon Clay and Emma Quilty  118
9. Deitsch Magic Past and Future / Eric Steinhart  131
10.  “We Are Here with Our Rebellious Joy”: Witches and Witchcraft in Turkey / AyÇa Kurtoğlu 144
11. Fortune-Telling, Women’s Friendship, and Divination Commodification in Contemporary Italy / Morena Tartari  158
III. Killing the Witch
12. A Feminist Theory of Witch Hunts / Govind Kelkar and Dev Nathan  175
13. Occult Violence and the Savage Slot: Understanding Tanzanian Witch-Killings in Historical and Ethnographic Context / Amy Nichols-Belo  190
14. Going All the Way: From Village to Supreme Court for a Witch-Killing in Central India / Helen MacDonald  205
15. Contemporary Trends in Witch-Hunting in India / Shashank Shekhar Sinha  210
16. Bewitching Gender History / Adrianna L. Ernstberger  233
IV. Art, Aesthetic, and Cultural Production
17. Mista Boo: Portrait of a Drag Witch / Isabel Machado  249
18. Witching Sound in the Anthropocene (and Occultcene) / D Ferrett  262
19. A Witch’s Guide to the Underground: Sixties Counterculture, Dianic Wicca, and the Cultural Trope of the “Witchy Diva” / Shelina Brown  275
20. A Queer Critical Analysis of Contemporary Representations of the Churail in Hindi Film / Saira Chhibber  289
21. Pakistan’s Churails: Young Feminists Choosing “Witch” Way Is Forward / Maria Amir  304
22. From “Born This Witch” to “Bad Bitch Witch”: A History of Witch Representation in Western Pop Culture / Jaime Hartless and Gabriella V. Smith  318
23. “I Put a Spell on Your and Now You’re Mine”: A Vulvacentric Reading of Witchcraft / Anna Rogel  331
V. Protest and Reclaiming
24. Hexing the Patriarchy: The Revolutionary Aesthetics of W.I.T.C.H. / Carolyn Chernoff  347
25. Witch-Ins and Other Feminist Acts / Tina Escaja and Laurie Essig  361
26. Disappearing Acts: Attending “Witch School” in Brooklyn, New York / Jacquelyn Marie Shannon  372
27. We Are All Witches: My Pagan Journey / Bernadette Barton  388
VI. Witch Epistemologies
28. Witching the Institution: Academia and Feminist Witchcraft / Ruth Charnock and Karen Schaller  401
29. A Ruderal Witchcraft Manifesto / Margaretha Haughwout and Oliver Kallhammer  420
30. Feminism as a Demon, or, The Difference Witches Make: Chiara Fumai with Carla Lonzi / Nicole Trigg  436
31. Religion and Magic through Feminist Lenses / Mary Jo Neitz and Marion S. Goldman  449
32. Crafting against Capitalism: Queer Longings for Witch Futures / Katie Von Wald and Ap Pierce  464
Contributors  475
Index  489