Reading & Composition

This course will explore the construction of gender, domestic spaces, and the occult, considering figures from healers and mystics to spinsters and the village witch. To what extent does the control of space create the witch, whether she self-identifies as such, or whether others label and persecute her? More generally, what spaces—physical, social, or intellectual—may a woman freely shape and inhabit? Where is she in possession of power, and where is her agency precluded? We will address these questions and others while reading across a range of eras and genres, including excerpts from the Malleus Maleficarum and texts from Hildegard of Bingen, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Daniel Mallory Ortberg.

We will also view and discuss horror films Hereditary and The VVitch.
This is a Reading &Composition course, and our main objective will be to develop critical reading and writing skills. To that end, substantial class time will be devoted to writing workshops and peer reviews. In addition to completing frequent essay assignments and revisions, students will be expected to read up to 100 pages of literary and scholarly texts each week, and to participate actively in class and virtual discussions.

Reading List:
Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum (excerpts)
Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias (excerpts)
Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead (excerpts)
Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes
Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”
Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s The Merry Spinster