First Year Seminar ‘Hocus Pocus’ casts new scholarly approach to witches – The Lafayette

What’s a witch? Are they cackling inexperienced girls on broomsticks? Stunning sorceresses, who will result in your salvation or smash? Or simply people who find themselves completely different from the remainder of the group? The First Yr Seminar “Hocus Pocus” stirs up these questions. 

“I believe one of many harmful but additionally attention-grabbing issues about witches is that they are often something as a result of all people sort of has their very own thought,” stated Emma Hetrick, the category teacher and Faculty Writing Program coordinator. “This concept of ‘the witch’ has been co-opted time and again and used to assist completely different agendas throughout time and area.”

“Hocus Pocus” analyzes witches by means of an interdisciplinary and intersectional lens. Hetrick was impressed to create the course resulting from her enchantment with colonial North America in addition to her consumption of films, tv and widespread books which are centered round witchcraft.

Hetrick thought that specializing in witches, particularly traditionally, would “be a extremely attention-grabbing mind-set about how persons are labeled as sure issues” and “how these labels both profit them or hurt them.”

From youngsters’s books like Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” and horror novels like “Rosemary’s Child,” to real-life transcripts from the Salem witch trials, college students of “Hocus Pocus” examine conjurations of the witch throughout tradition and media.

“It’s positively been attention-grabbing to see how the thought of the witch has modified from taking a look at simply magical beings of very early cultures to the extra fashionable interpretations,” stated Abigail Feeley ‘28, a scholar within the class.

“As society’s opinions change and as values change, that displays witches’ reception,” she continued.

One of many essential themes of “Hocus Pocus” is about what varieties of girls are labeled as witches by society and whose views have been cloaked by dominant social teams. Hetrick stated that her class has explored how the persecution of “witches” and outsiders has reworked throughout historical past, from witch trials to extra fashionable types of “witch-hunting” within the rhetoric of American politics and book-banning.

“We talked rather a lot about relying on whose perspective is being prioritized, the story finally ends up trying rather a lot completely different,” Hetrick stated. “The historic file might reveal one factor, however there’s a lot that will get disregarded due to what the priorities are and who has energy and company in creating that historic file.”

Aside from the discussions which are held throughout class, Hetrick has college students analyze the position of witches of their on a regular basis lives by means of alternatives exterior of the classroom. One mission college students have been assigned was to create shows for the Easton Space Public Library selling youngsters’s books about witches. These shows have been accompanied by dynamic supplies like phrase searches and mock newspaper articles.

The ultimate paper for the category will ask college students to pick a fictional character or real-life particular person and write “about them by means of the lens of being a witch and the way that adjustments our understanding of them,” in line with Hetrick.

She can also be planning on taking the category to see the cinematic adaption of the Broadway hit “Depraved” when it comes out in theaters.

“I believe it’s actually cool that Professor Hetrick isn’t solely selling the subject of her class but additionally the group,” stated Jessi Kleiber ‘27, the writing affiliate for the course.

Hetrick hopes that the category breaks down college students’ earlier conceptions of educational scholarship. 

“I don’t assume lots of people would robotically assume witches is one thing that it’s best to examine within the school classroom,” Hetrick stated. “I really feel actually privileged that I’m in a position to educate this class, that we’re in a position to have the conversations we’ve got.”

“Every little thing that they study within the class, they will take with them to different courses, but additionally has relevance to them of their lives,” she continued.