Complex Connections
Forgotten Sorcerers: The Prevalence of Jews in European Witch Trials View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maya Fitch
The Medieval Period saw the eruption of witch trials across the European Continent. Amid these witch hunts, Jews became a consistent target for accusations of demonic and heretical acts. Preceding the Medieval Period, Jews in the Greco-Roman world were established as sickly and violent people. Anti-Semitic stigmatization influenced the feminization and demonization of the Jewish body in the Medieval period. Christians characterized Jews as feminine through the accusation of male menstruation, which also allowed for the connection of Jews to menstrual-related magic. Furthermore, Jews were associated with the celestial body Saturn, deeming them capable of ritual cannibalism. This manifested in the routine accusation of Jews committing ritual murder and cannibalism known as The Blood Libel. Christians connected supposed ritual murder by Jews to Passover celebrations, male menstruation, the recreation of Christ’s Crucifixion, and magical potions. In addition to The Blood Libels, Jews were accused of being in league with the devil and having devilish bodily characteristics such as horns and goatees. Demonic femininity, cannibalism, pacts with the devil, and sorcery are all accusations that both Jews and gentile witches were tried for in Medieval Europe. For both Jews and gentile witches, these accusations often ended in execution via fire. In this study, I demonstrate how, beginning in the Medieval Period, European society systematically persecuted Jews and Witches as related, and sometimes identical, entities.
Mirabai in Public Spheres: Liminal Spaces, Bhakti, and Women's Emancipation in India View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ritu Varghese
Stories, myths and legends travel across time and spaces, and constitute the very essence of a nation’s culture. The way certain popular narratives originate and circulate in public spheres—constantly challenging yet cohabitating with hegemonic forces of dominant cultures—is pivotal to understand why such narratives endure and how they evolve with the socio-political culture of an age. The case of the sixteenth-century Indian bhakti poet-saint Mirabai along with the multiple narratives of her life and legend that currently circulate in public spheres is crucial to understand the discourse of bhakti that once emerged as a social movement but eventually took the form of a religio-political enterprise which assimilated the marginalised with the centre, and provided new meanings of cultural interactions. Bhakti as an epochal sensibility valorised cultural resistance and thrived upon the creative energies of poet-saints such as Mirabai herself. The paper traces the lives of destitute women—especially widows—with interviews conducted recently in and around the city of Vrindavan in India, where they have embraced the name, life and suffering of Mirabai and are called ‘Miramais.’ It also explores the reception of Mirabai among Indian women as an icon of resistance in Indian cultural landscape when she moves along the public domains of canonised popular memory. Her lyrical compositions known as bhajans are read as sites of dissent, and have paved way for generations of Indian women to achieve socio-cultural emancipation through daily acts of performative bhakti in the form of bhajan singing and dancing.
A Comparison of Agency of the Women of the Hebrew Bible with other Ancient near Eastern Heroines: Agency (not) Granted to Women's Narratives in Ancient Near Eastern Literature View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deborah Gruber
The stories of the women of the Hebrew bible was often used a secondary device used to promote both the destiny arc of assignation of land and promise of number and nationhood.The fulfillment of these desires were almost always emphatically complete by male heroes. This paper examines the roles and narratives of women biblical heroines and compares them with women from other Ancient Near Eastern cultures of the same time period such as Crete, Greece,Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Using legal and literary documents from these cultures, special attention will be given to women's rights to justice, agency, and identity, in order to ascertain the placement of biblical women in the Ancient Near East.
Key Figures of Religious Leaders in the Russian-Ukrainian War
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Luis Andres Garduño Gómez
With the outbreak of a war between the former territories of Kievan Rus, today Russia and Ukraine, it seems important to analyze the role and actions of three of the most important non-political figures for the citizens of that area: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk and Pope Francis. The reason is that historically religious leaders have played a key role in measuring armed conflicts, for example, during the war in Sudan where the Vatican intervention was key to the end of the war; or the papal intervention in the Beagle Conflict between Chile and Argentina. It is therefore pertinent to analyze how these three religious leaders have acted and the possible intervention they could make for the end of the Russian-Ukrainian war. On the one hand, the Russian Patriarch supports Putin's position; on the other hand, the Greek Catholic Patriarch manages the situation from the epicenter; finally, Pope Francis pulls diplomatic strings from Rome. In summary, this research uses qualitative methods, specifically historical and previous case studies, to provide some possible future scenarios that only the passage of time will prove to be true.
