Instructor: Dr. Sharday Mosurinjohn Office: Theological Hall Room 230 Office Hour: Friday 11:30-12:30 Email: sm110@queensu.ca (please put the course code RELS 202 in the email subject line)

TA: Max Charest Email: maxime.charest@queensu.ca (please put the course code RELS 202 in the email subject line)

Course Description:

Is there a difference between magic and religion? If so, which category does a practice like Wicca fall into – is it witchcraft, or earth religion? Does it have anything to do with the magic and rituals of Satanism, another “new religious movement” (NRM) that spawned the “Satanic Panic” of the 80s and 90s? Can we look back to the “Witch Craze” of early modern Europe to help us understand public fear about NRMs like these? How do the politics of gender, race, colonization, and modernization play out in this and other forms of contemporary witchcraft? And how can we understand the pop culture obsession with everything supernatural? What religious contexts, for instance, do zombies originally come from? And does our media sometimes take on a sacred or spiritual connotation itself? Speaking of entertainment value, do magic done by professional magicians fulfill the same human needs as magic done in the context of a belief system and lifeway?

In this course, we will seek to answer these questions, among others, by looking to anthropological works on magic to give us some historical perspective on the concept, and we will look at contemporary religious studies literature to learn what distinctions between magic and religion plague the field today. We’ll discover how new “new” religions and “neo” revivals really are by looking to the concept of “invented tradition” and considering how witchcraft in non-Western cultures can be thoroughly modern, and how Western modernity can be thoroughly enchanted. And of course, we’ll draw a healthy dose of examples and case studies from today’s popular media penchant for magic, witchcraft, and the supernatural – from family-friendly fiction like Harry Potter to gritty zombie flicks.

Assessment will be about supporting your curiosity to learn ideas, make connections, and creatively develop your own extensions (the ICE model). It will consist of your being actively present in class, responding to an exhibition at the Agnes Etherington gallery on ritual masks, a collaborative critical annotation assignment of a course reading, contributing to Wikipedia subject matter articles, and a final poster presentation.

Learning Outcomes

In this course, you will: -Name some key issues and debates going on in the study of magic, witchcraft, and the supernatural today;

-Apply some of the course readings to theorize your own experiences with magic, witchcraft, and the supernatural in popular culture and explain them in relation social forces;

-Contribute content-specific knowledge to the public domain;

-Practice your scholarly writing, conversation, and presentation skills.

One of the assignments that will help us reach and demonstrate these learning outcomes is our Wikipedia assignment, which counts for 18% of your total grade and can be done any time between Weeks 7-12.

This course is supported by the WikiEdu Foundation and we will be partnering with them to add scholarly rigor to course-relevant articles. We will discuss issues surrounding the reliability, purpose, and methodology of Wikipedia itself, as well as what writing for a “tertiary” or encyclopedic resource entails. We will discuss how to select an appropriate article and I’ll teach you the nuts and bolts of actually editing Wikipedia yourself.

Complete online training ~1 hr 5% (Week 7) Pass/fail

Critique an Article (5%) (Any Time Throughout Weeks 7-12) Scored out of 5

and either Add 2 Sentences or Add an Illustration (5%) (Any Time Throughout Weeks 7-12) Scored out of 5

post a link to your contributions in OnQ 3% (Any Time Throughout Weeks 7-12) pass/fail

Critique an Article: Critically evaluate an existing Wikipedia article related to the class, and leave suggestions for improving it on the article’s talk page.

Add to an Article: Using course readings or other relevant secondary sources, add 2 sentences of new information to a Wikipedia article related to the class. Be sure to choose your contribution carefully: ask yourself how this information improves the article’s coverage, depth, balance, etc.. Integrate it well into the existing article, and include a citation to the source.

Illustrate an Article: Find an opportunity to improve an article by uploading and adding a photo you took or a drawing you made.