Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2023, History

Medieval Europe was a period of development and change, none of which is more evident than through the transition of medical authority from women and magic to solely men and medicine. At the start of the Middle Ages, magic and medicine held an interwoven relationship, where women could freely practice and function as medical authorities within their communities alongside men. Their presence as healers provided them with a rare opportunity to escape from the traditional confines of the patriarchal society of the Middle Ages. However, the creation of medical universities, which excluded women from enrolling, sought to eliminate the role which magic held within the medical field. With its usefulness in through medicine relegated, an opposition towards magic begun developing and the connection between magic and witchcraft to the nature of women was solidified. Women's already vulnerable status within society added onto the perceived threat of witchcraft opened the door for direct persecution women. Medical practitioners, ecclesiastical writers, the Christian church, governing bodies, and local authorities all contributed to the curation of stereotypes surrounding witchcraft practitioners. As a result, the Inquisition and larger witch hunt movement developed, specifically targeting women. The witchcraft trials were the final deadly product of this movement and were overwhelmingly disproportionate in their indictment and execution of women.

Committee: Christian Raffensperger (Advisor); Nona Moskowitz (Committee Member); Scott Rosenberg (Committee Member) Subjects: Alternative Medicine; Folklore; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Medicine; Medieval History; Middle Ages; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, Women's and Gender Studies

Within environmental and feminist politics alike, there exists a sense that the time to make substantial change has passed. I propose that to resist the sense of dread that occupies the minds of activists and scholars that a multidimensional approach could simultaneously address gendered and environmental violence and oppression by reviving ecofeminist ideas from the 1980s. This thesis is dedicated to interrogating ideas about gender, environment, and monstrosity to propose that the notion of the human must be resisted and rather an intentional occupation of the monstrous could aid in reimagining the a future of prosperity and community.

Committee: Julie White (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Philosophy; Environmental Studies; Gender; Gender Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, American Culture Studies

The mythopoetic histories of prehistoric matriarchies and European witch hunts written by second-wave feminist Goddess worshippers and witches have been roundly critiqued by feminist academics for their uncritical reproduction of conventional patriarchal gender archetypes and their neocolonial appropriation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color's spiritual practices, deities, and symbols. Feminist scholars have argued that these narratives serve only to depoliticize feminist politics and prevent meaningful progress in the feminist movement. The goal of this project is not to refute or dismiss the critiques of these scholars, rather, this dissertation builds from these critiques to explore whether feminist Goddess worshippers and witches are doomed to perpetually repeat the sins of their foremothers, or if contemporary feminists are finding ways to engage, resist, and rewrite the neocolonial, racist, and gender essentialist tropes inherited from their first and second-wave forerunners. Refusing the binaries that ally secular, progressive activism against private, regressive religion, this project uses a mixed-methods approach of queer-feminist discourse analysis and focus group interviews to examine how the discourse of feminist Goddess worshippers and witches has produced the witch as an indelible figure within feminist activism and spirituality. It traces the figure's evolution throughout the eras of suffrage, radical second wave, and contemporary feminism. This project contributes to the existing literature by building a hermeneutics of repair using Melanie Klein's object relations theory and Stuart Hall's concept of oppositional reading to complement the critiques generated by feminist scholars working from what Paul Ricoeur calls a hermeneutics of suspicion. I offer a critical, queer-feminist analysis that employs both modes of hermeneutics to feminist discourse and focus group interviews to analyze how the spiritual practices and writings of Goddess feminis (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kimberly Coates Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Timothy Messer-Kruse Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sandra Faulkner Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrea Cripps Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: American Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation is an examination of maturation through the lens of adolescent cyborgs in young adult literature. I begin by asserting that adolescents are inherently posthuman because of their liminal, hybrid subjectivity. Humanism asks teenagers to suppress what it perceives as monstrous otherness so that they can become normative adult citizens. The cyborg is therefore an excellent analytical tool for examining how these adolescent identities are constrained to specific kinds of humanist conceptualizations of identity through the development that society promotes. I offer a complex matrix for understanding subjectivity that navigates humanist and posthumanist ideologies alongside conceptualizations of embodiment and socialization. In the body of the dissertation, I examine three cyborgian figures: the shapeshifter, the witch, and the virtual reality avatar. Shapeshifters embody adolescent change. Their developmental trajectories follow their navigation of the dogmatism and manipulations of humanist pursuits of science. The mutability of the shapeshifter symbolizes the adolescent's experience with changing bodies, which humanism seeks to control and posthumanism seeks to embrace. Witches must navigate access to power that exceeds that normally allowed to teenagers. The school story, a narrative regularly associated with this figure in young adult literature, restricts adolescents to particular identities by teaching them to control their powers. The virtual reality avatar signifies the adolescent's navigation of posthuman space. YAL normally privileges analog reality, asking teenagers to leave behind their virtual space in order to mature. In each of these three figures, I analyze narratives that follow the normative, humanist trajectory of growth alongside those that explore alternative, posthumanist maturations. I examine the figures across various visual and verbal formats, looking at film, comics, and prose adaptations of archetypal cyborg figures. The (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michelle Abate (Advisor); Caroline Clark (Committee Member); Brian McHale (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Popular Culture

This thesis investigates the relationship between the body of the witch in popular culture and attitudes and assumptions about the female body. This study was conducted through textual analysis of several popular films and television shows about witches. This analysis is structured around three core archetypes of femininity: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, examining how each of the three archetypes preserve stereotypes about women and how witches can subvert or reinforce those stereotypes. Using the theory of abjection as a foundation, this thesis argues that witches have a strong relationship to abject femininity and can therefore expose the anxieties and fears about female bodies in a patriarchal culture. This is not a comprehensive study of witches in popular culture, and further research into the intersections of gender and race, sexuality, and ability is needed to form any definite conclusions. This study is merely an exploration of female archetypes and how the female body is conceived through the witch's body in popular culture.

Committee: Jeffrey Brown Dr. (Advisor); Angela Nelson Dr. (Committee Member); Esther Clinton Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Media; Religion; Womens Studies

M.A. (Master of Arts in English), Ohio Dominican University, 2019, English

Representations of witchcraft and beings of magical power were popular forms of entertainment for William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, despite the less whimsical ramifications faced by actual persons accused of witchcraft at the time. King James I was well known to have an acute fascination with occult studies, as evidenced by his publication of Daemonologie in 1597. The vilification and fear mongering that arose from James's condemnation of witchcraft has had resounding consequences particularly affecting cultural ideology surrounding the autonomy of women for generations thereafter. In the world of the Elizabethan theater, representations of witches could be depicted as entertainment while also either endorsing or critiquing the cultural climate surrounding the subject of witchcraft in society. Shakespeare and his contemporaries portrayed these supernatural characters in a variety of ways: some comical and innocuous, others startling and sinister. But is there a distinction between the male representations of witchcraft as opposed to female (or perhaps gender-fluid) representations of witches? This paper believes there are marked distinctions and will seek to examine this question by exploring characters depicted in Shakespeare's Macbeth, The Tempest, and Henry VI. Attention will also be given to portrayals of witches by Shakespeare's contemporaries, notably Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford. Consideration will also be paid to the ways in which particularly Shakespeare's depictions of witchcraft and representations of supernatural women have evolved in more contemporary adaptations with the insurgence of feminist ideology over the last century, and a comparative examination of original and adaptive texts will mark the distinctions of how specific performances have transformed from what may have been their original portrayals on the Elizabethan stage.

Committee: Jeremy Glazier M.F.A. (Advisor); Martin Brick Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1951, English

Committee: Ruth Hughey (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2005, Theatre

This work traces the theatrical representation of the witch on the Early Modern English stage. I examine the ways in which the witch was constructed as a binary opposite against which dominant society could define itself. This work provides close readings of three representative plays from the era: Macbeth, The Witch of Edmonton, and The Witches of Edmonton. I also investigate the significance of the personal involvement of King James I in real-life witch trials. This work breaks the progression of the witch into three stages - fear, familiarity, and ridicule – each of which served to allay the anxieties of dominant culture. Situating the texts within the specific historical cosmology of their original productions, I suggest one possible mapping of the intersections of the intersections of gender, class, nation, politics, and economics which they depict.

Committee: Ann Armstrong (Advisor) Subjects: Theater