witchcraft

“Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy, and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen”, Scandia. Tidskrift för historisk forskning, vol. 63, no. 1, p. 17-33, 1997.

“Blåkulla and its Antecedents: Transvection and Conventicles in Nordic Witchcraft”, Alvíssmál. Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Kultur Skandinaviens , vol. 7, p. 81-100, 1997. Website

“Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages: Impotence, Infertility, and Magic”, Norveg. The Norwegian Journal of Folklore, vol. 38, p. 19-42, 1998.

with, Collins, D., and Tangherlini, T. R., “Special Section: Witchcraft in Local and Global Perspectives (Introduction)”, Western Folklore, vol. 59, no. 3-4, p. 246-50, 2000.

“Gender and Nordic Witchcraft in the Later Middle Ages”, Arv: The Yearbook of Scandinavian Folklore, vol. 56, p. 7-24, 2000.

“Folklore and Philology Revisited: Medieval Scandinavian Folklore?”, in Norden og Europa. Fagtradisjoner i nordisk etnologi og folkloristikk, Olso: Novus forlag, 2000, p. 286-94.

“Witchcraft Persecutions in the Post-Craze Era: The Case of Ann Izzard of Great Paxton, 1808”, Western Folklore, vol. 59, p. 304-38, 2000. Website

“Magic as Acquired Art and the Ethnographic Value of the Sagas”, in Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society, Viborg: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2003, p. 132-52. Website

“A Case of Witchcraft Assault in early nineteenth-century England as Ostensive Action”, in Witchcraft continued: Popular magic in modern Europe, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, p. 1-28. Website

N. with Price, et al., “Witchcraft and Deep Time— a debate at Harvard”, Antiquity, vol. 84, p. 1-16, 2010. Website

Culture and Belief 16: Performance, Tradition and Cultural Studies: An Introduction to Folklore and Mythology

Semester:

Fall

Offered:

2011

Examines major forms of folklore (e.g., myths, legends, epics, beliefs, rituals, festivals) and the theoretical approaches used in their study. Analyzes how folklore shapes national, regional, and ethnic identities, as well as daily life; considers the function of folklore within the groups that perform and use it, employing materials drawn from a wide range of areas (e.g., South Slavic oral epics, American occupational lore, Northern European ballads, witchcraft in Africa and America, Cajun Mardi Gras). Note: Required of Concentrators and for the Secondary Field in Folklore and Mythology.

Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Website

My research addresses a wide variety of genres and periods of Nordic culture and literature, centering on popular traditions, mythology, and legends in the late medieval and early modern periods, but I have also written on such diverse topics as Scandinavian drama and women's autobiographical literature in the 17th century.