Spellbound

Woman and Witchcraft in America

Edited by Elizabeth Reis

Publication date:

01 June 1998

Length of book:

276 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780842025768

Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America is a collection of twelve articles that explore crucial events in the history of witch-hunting and its demonization of women in American and American women's own use of witchcraft as a source of identity and strength, as well as the complicated relationship between the two. Beginning with the accused 'witches' of colonial America, Spellbound extends its focus through the nineteenth century to explore women's involvement with alternative spiritualities, and culminates with examinations of the contemporary feminist neopagan and Goddess movements.

Chapter 1 The Economic Basis of Witchcraft
Chapter 2 Female Speech and Other Demons: Witchcraft and Wordcraft in Early New England
Chapter 3 Gender and the Meanings of Confession in Early New England
Chapter 4 Dark Eve
Chapter 5 "The Devil Will Roar in Me Anon": The Possession of Martha Roberson, Boston, 1741
Chapter 6 Seneca Possessed: Colonialism, Witchcraft, and Gender in the Time of Handsome Lake
Chapter 7 Sojourner Truth's Religion in Her Moment of Pentecostalism and Witchcraft
Chapter 8 "Hoodoo? God Do": African American Women and Contested Spirituality in the Spiritual Churches of New Orleans
Chapter 9 Red Lilac of the Cayugas: Traditional Indian Laws and Culture Conflict in a Witchcraft Trial in Buffalo, New York, 1930
Chapter 10 Witchcraft as Goddess Religion
Chapter 11 Affinities and Appropriations in Feminist Spirituality
Chapter 12 In Whose Image? Misogynist Trends in the Construction of Goddess and Woman

This collection of essays is a thorough and enlightening presentation of what has been and what continues to be the state of the powerful woman in American society.