The editors of The Witch Studies Reader meeting at NWSA2024 meetings in Detroit... Chauduri, Ward, and Tushabe wa Tushabe.
Posted on 04/08/2025 3:11:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Witchcraft has been feared, mocked and romanticized — but rarely has it been fully understood as a story of feminist resistance and enduring cultural power. Feminist studies scholar Jane Ward has set out to change that narrative. Her latest book — a collaboration with co-author Soma Chaudhuri — introduces “feminist witch studies,” a new interdisciplinary field that explores the power, persecution and political dimensions of witchcraft across cultures.
Ward, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, first engaged with the subject while preparing a course on the history of witches and witchcraft. Known for her work in sexuality and gender studies — including a first-of-its-kind course called Critical Heterosexuality Studies — Ward noticed a clear difference in how scholars from the Global North and Global South wrote about witches. “In the Global North, witch hunts are treated as relics of the past, largely viewed as events limited to the medieval or early modern periods," she said. "But in the Global South, witch accusations and persecutions are still ongoing today.”
This contrast sparked a broader conversation — one that questioned not just history but who gets to tell it. Ward and Chaudhuri’s book, “The Witch Studies Reader” (Duke University Press, 2025), shifts the focus away from an outsider studying witchcraft as a cultural curiosity and instead amplifies the voices of those who identify as witches themselves, many of whom are living in Latin America, Asia, Africa or Oceania.
A central theme of the book is how witchcraft serves as a powerful form of feminist and decolonial resistance. The book illustrates how practices historically demonized as witchcraft — such as midwifery, herbal medicine and abortion care — have enabled women to exist and operate outside of state and capitalist control.
“Witchcraft is often about existing just outside state control and capitalism,” Ward said. “This makes it critical to understand witchcraft through a feminist lens — not just because women are typically its practitioners, but because of what makes it threatening to established power structures.”
Still, these very practices become legitimate when sanctioned by the state. In Uganda, healing methods labeled as witchcraft are criminalized unless officially licensed by government authorities. “The same pattern played out in the U.S. and Europe, where midwifery was once associated with witchcraft but later legitimized through state regulation,” Ward added.
The Halloween witch — crone-faced, wart-nosed, hunched over her cauldron — is one of the most enduring images in Western pop culture. But Ward argues that the fear she represents is much deeper. “The cauldron, the mortar and pestle — these are just kitchen tools,” she explained. “But because they’re tied to women’s domestic work and healing practices, they’ve been transformed into something sinister.”
Jane Ward teaches and writes about gender and sexual cultures and has published on topics including the anti-gender movement, masculinity and online misogyny, the marriage self-help industry, the ebb and flow of interest in lesbian feminism, the meaning of sex...
But Ward and her co-author aren’t just interested in how witches are depicted — they want to know how witches see themselves. “For some, ‘witch’ is a patriarchal slur that they reclaim for resistance,” she said. “For others, it’s an identity tied to essential feminine magic, or a deeply queer figure who exists in defiance of rigid gender norms.”
“We’ve seen people using the concept of the curse, the hex and the spell as ways to push back against gendered violence and oppression,” Ward said, noting how the witch has been adopted as an image of defiance against patriarchal structures.
Beyond folklore, Ward and Chaudhuri are examining the witch as a powerful yet feared figure in global media. Stories of seductive women who morph into hags, witches who drain life from children and teenage girls who use supernatural abilities to resist oppression all reflect deeper anxieties about female power. “From ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ to the Pakistani series ‘Churails,’ the witch is often portrayed as someone who fights back against oppression,” Ward said.
With this book, Ward and Chaudhuri are positioning feminist witch studies as a formal academic field, claiming it as “a new discipline.” “We believe gender studies needs this perspective — analyzing the witch through a feminist, decolonial lens reveals critical insights about power, resistance and history,” Ward said.
The editors of The Witch Studies Reader meeting at NWSA2024 meetings in Detroit... Chauduri, Ward, and Tushabe wa Tushabe.
Feminists, like all Marxists, are ungrateful parasites.
“Feminist Witch” is a redundancy.
A degree in those studies comes with $120K of debt and a future of playing the victim.
perhaps to the surprise of almost no one who is paying attention, female shamanism / feminist religious studies is already a university thing, and has been for at least the last 35 years or so. the trouble is that after these women are graduated, they have no STEM skills, and cannot climb the career ladder. This leads to the need to return to college for an MBA (or law degree, or physical therapy, primary school educator, etc.) thus often incurring more student loans, or becoming a true believer foot soldier in the radical leftist movement.
a side question, should guys marry girls with a mountain of student debt over them (seems somewhat dangerous)?
I don’t think they will like their new Master.
Exodus 22:18 ►
Modern Translations
New International Version
“Do not allow a sorceress to live.
New Living Translation
“You must not allow a sorceress to live.
English Standard Version
“You shall not permit a sorceress to live.
Berean Study Bible
You must not allow a sorceress to live.
New American Standard Bible
“You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
NASB 1995
“You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
NASB 1977
“You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
Amplified Bible
“You shall not allow a woman who practices sorcery to live.
Christian Standard Bible
“Do not allow a sorceress to live.
Holman Christian Standard Bible
You must not allow a sorceress to live.”
Contemporary English Version
Death is the punishment for witchcraft.
Good News Translation
“Put to death any woman who practices magic.
GOD’S WORD® Translation
“Never let a witch live.
International Standard Version
“You are not to allow a sorceress to live.
NET Bible
“You must not allow a sorceress to live.
Classic Translations
King James Bible
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
New King James Version
“You shall not permit a sorceress to live.
King James 2000 Bible
You shall not allow a witch to live.
New Heart English Bible
“You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
World English Bible
“You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
American King James Version
You shall not suffer a witch to live.
American Standard Version
Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.
A Faithful Version
You shall not allow a sorceress to live.
Darby Bible Translation
thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
English Revised Version
Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.
Webster’s Bible Translation
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Early Modern
Geneva Bible of 1587
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to liue.
Bishops’ Bible of 1568
(22:17) Thou shalt not suffer a witche to lyue.
Coverdale Bible of 1535
Thou shalt not suffre a witch to lyue.
Tyndale Bible of 1526
Thou shalt not suffre a witch to lyue,
Literal Translations
Literal Standard Version
You do not keep a witch alive.
Young’s Literal Translation
‘A witch thou dost not keep alive.
Smith’s Literal Translation
Thou shalt not preserve alive a sorceress.
Catholic Translations
Douay-Rheims Bible
Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live.
Catholic Public Domain Version
You shall not permit practitioners of the black arts to live.
Translations from Aramaic
Peshitta Holy Bible Translated
You shall not let a sorcerer live.
Lamsa Bible
You shall not suffer a witch to live.
OT Translations
JPS Tanakh 1917
Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.
Brenton Septuagint Translation
Ye shall not save the lives of sorcerers.
Minus Milano of course..
Ya think they’re gonna be upset when they find out over half of the “girl-power” stuff they believe in was put together by a guy named Raymond Buckland (”Robat” if there’s a coven to be had)?
As with women’s sports, apparently only a man can be a good woman (or witch, in this case).
GLENDOWER
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
Our tax money at work.
And a tremendous path to a highly remunerative career. (Washing the lavatory at the greyhound depot?(
Send your kids to sign up right away! Be sure they collect in the federal student loan program and all the free groceries annd free cafeteria meals and health care and transit passes given out on campus.
That is because it isn't.
The word witch is neither male or female as a witch may be either.
Men and women both have practiced and been accused of practicing witchcraft.
The restrictions on witchcraft vary according to the culture but rarely was it regarded as a good or even neutral thing.
Another reason to avoid UC schools if there are other options. Pretty soon “justified murder” of adults will be on the table for psychotic feminist women.
“abortion care”
That’s what the delusionists call baby murder these days.
The witch trial in Europe, as well as in Colonial America tried, tortured, and killed many MEN, who were supposedly witches!
And white, as well as non-white "witches", in many instances, were headed by a MAN, hence it was a patriarchy or a DUAL/the male and the female led group, with men being called wizards, witches, warlocks, shaman, and many other names!
They’re also NUTS!
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