Abstract

Shapeshifting, spellcasting, salt circles: who are witches and why should we, as scholars, care to know more about them? My dissertation, “Witchy Methodologies: Bewitchment, Shapeshifting, and Communication with More-Than-Human Kin” examines the media and techniques of contemporary North American witchcraft — such as tools, spells, and communication with spirits, ancestors, and more-than-human kin — against a theoretical background that reaches towards feminist and unsettled positionalities. How does the witch act in / on the world in a way that opens tricky questions surrounding the methods we use to craft knowledge as well as who is deemed able to do so?

My dissertation is broken down into three chapters, where each chapter involves a set of media or techniques that witches use as well as their surrounding questions — Chapter 1: “Mirrors”; Chapter 2: “Knots,” and Chapter 3: “Fluids.” In Chapter 1, I look at mirrors, concentrating especially on the witches’ black scrying mirror that does not reflect, but, rather, divines. In chapter 2, I open a discussion of what I call the methodology of bewitchment and how it is involved with tricks and traps, such as knot spells, cauldrons, and animal familiars. In chapter 3, I focus on fluids; in particular water, blood, and ectoplasm. What is it, finally, that the techniques and tools of witches produce, if anything?

Ultimately, my dissertation is about communication. The tools and techniques that I discuss throughout may seem extraordinary but are in fact quotidian and widespread. We all communicate and seek to connect with more-than-human companions and kin. Rather than learning or making, witches’ methods offer a way of unlearning and unmaking the structures that define and bind the perimeters of the enlightened and empirical. How do witches and their techniques teach us to attune to the subtle frequencies of our environments and underworlds — and open our ability to listen.