Digital Event Type: Zoom Lecture

Lurking at the Threshold: Finding Enchantment Beyond Belief by Peter Bebergal

Lurking at the Threshold: Finding Enchantment Beyond Belief

The challenge of writing about the supernatural and the occult is that one is assumed either to be a believer or a debunker. Peter Bebergal examines how authentic states of enchantment can exist beyond the debate of true or false. Bebergal has learned that allowing ourselves to exist–if only momentarily–in a state of enchantment is a much more interesting place to be. In the ambiguous and the liminal deep wells of meaning can be found and is where the use of magic is an important tool to activate the imagination. Using music, film clips, and images, this course will reveal how at the threshold is the possibility of enchantment as a creative and psychological experience that is immune to religious fundamentalism and hardened atheism.

Bio

Peter Bebergal writes widely on the speculative and slightly fringe. He is the author most recently of Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll and is the editor of the sword and sorcery anthology Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of D&D. His essays have appeared in NewYorker.com, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement and Boing Boing. Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School, and lives in Cambridge.

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Witch-bottles from the 17th–20th Century – a Zoom talk with Brian Hoggard

Witch-bottles first appear in the archaeological record in the third quarter of the 17th Century. Most have been recovered from locations in buildings where they were originally concealed. The evidence within these bottles and their context within a building provides us with many clues about how they were used and thought to work. There are also 17th-Century documents which describe a method of boiling or heating bottles with urine and pins.

This illustrated Zoom talk will explore both types of evidence to unpick what might have really been going on with these practices.

Brian Hoggard has been studying history, archaeology and folk beliefs since his teens; his Twitter account enigmatically states that he has been a ‘Researcher of strange things found in walls and under floors since 1999…’ Brian’s undergraduate dissertation focused on folk beliefs and witchcraft, when he noticed there was a huge amount of further work that could be done to explore the archaeology of witchcraft. At that point his research escalated into a major project which has culminated in the publication of Magical House Protection: The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft (Berghahn 2019).

For more information see: www.apotropaios.co.uk

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize.

For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

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The Cinematic Zombie: 1930 – 1969 by Dr Louise Fenton

Zombie. The word alone recalls images of shuffling, decaying corpses, of creatures seeking human flesh, of the living dead. Dr Louise Fenton will examine how the zombie originated in the films of the Golden Age of Hollywood. In early films the zombie was firmly in a Haitian and Caribbean context, a benign creature created to serve. The zombie then fell into decline during the 1950s, however, Louise will show examples of how it was represented during this time and how the zombie began to be detached from its cultural origins. It was then in the 1960s that the zombie became the flesh-eating creature that we are more familiar with today. Louise will discuss the zombie in films such as White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Plague of the Zombies (1966) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

This is a fully illustrated talk with film clips.

Dr Louise Fenton is a senior lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton and a cultural and social historian. She teaches contextual studies in the School of Art and supervises PhD students; she is also an artist and illustrator and uses drawing within her research. Her interest in New Orleans Voodoo began when studying for her PhD which she was awarded from the University of Warwick in 2010. Most recently Louise has appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Beyond Belief’ and is a consultant on a new drama for BBC 3. Her research covers Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo and Witchcraft, especially curses and cursed objects.

 

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Radical Dreams and Chicago Surrealism: A Conversation with Penelope Rosemont, Abigail Susik, and Elliott H. King

Celebrating the publication of the volume of essays Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture Resistance from Penn State University Press in March of this year, editors Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik host a discussion with legendary activist and Chicago surrealist, Penelope Rosemont. The conversation will cover topics relevant to the display of Chicago surrealist pamphlets and posters at the recent “Surrealism Beyond Borders” exhibition at the Tate Modern through August, and attendees will have the chance to pose plenty of questions about surrealism past and present.

Penelope Rosemont was welcomed into the Paris group by André Breton in 1966, and she coauthored the essay, “Surrealism in the U.S.,” which appeared in the Paris-based surrealist journal L’Archibras. Artist, writer, and publisher, her work was included by Arturo Schwarz in the 1986 Venice Biennale “Arts & Alchemy” presentation. Her books include Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (University of Texas Press); Dreams & Everyday Life: André Breton, Surrealism Rebel Worker, SDS & the Seven Cities of Cibola (Kerr); and Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields (City Lights).

Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, 2021). She is co-editor of Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester University Press, 2021), and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2021). She is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism. https://willamette.edu/undergraduate/arth/faculty/susik/index.html

Elliott H. King is Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University and the author of Salvador Dalí: The Late Work and Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. He is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism. www.spiralspecs.com

Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture Resistance www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09135-8.html

Between Two Worlds: On Art & Loss by Rochelle Roberts

Rochelle Roberts writes about her personal experience with the lingering ghost of grief and the ways in which she uses visual art as a way to understand and navigate it. Exploring the idea of ghosts and hauntings, she looks at her relationship to the work of Francesca Woodman, Duane Michals, Louise Bourgeois and Rachel Whiteread which, years later, helped her deal with the death of her brother when she was 8 years old.

Rochelle is a writer and editor with an interest in visual art. She has worked with organisations such as The Modernist Review, Maximillian William gallery, Decorating Dissidence and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal as well as being Editor at Prestel.

This event is curated and hosted by Rachel Ashenden, co-founder of The Debutante, a magazine which explores the continued legacies and relevance of women surrealists, and is Communications Officer at the National Galleries of Scotland. There will also be the opportunity to ask Rochelle questions about her writing practice.

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Emily Rapp Black: Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg

Emily Rapp Black: Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg

Emily Rapp Black is a New York Times-bestselling author. Her most recent book, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, is a personal exploration of how the Mexican Surrealist’s artistic practice and experiences has shaped her own life.

At first sight of Frida Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas, Emily Rapp Black felt a connection with the artist. An amputee from childhood, Emily grew up with a succession of prosthetic limbs and learned that she had to hide her disability from the world.

Kahlo sustained lifelong injuries after a horrific bus crash, and her right leg was eventually amputated. In Kahlo’s art, Rapp Black recognized her own life, from the numerous operations to the compulsion to create to silence pain. Here she tells her story of losing her infant son to Tay-Sachs, giving birth to a daughter, and learning to accept her body. She writes of how Frida Kahlo inspired her to find a way forward when all seemed lost.

Bio

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir and The Still Point of the Turning World (Penguin Press), a New York Times bestseller and an Editor’s Pick. Her work has appeared in VOGUE, the New York Times, Die Zeit, The Times-London, Lenny Letter, The Sun, TIME, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, O the Oprah Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and other publications and anthologies. She is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she also teaches medical narratives in the School of Medicine. She is the mother of two children: Ronan (2010-2013), and Charlotte (age 6).

Purchase your copy of Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg here: https://www.nottinghilleditions.com/product/frida-kahlo-and-my-left-leg/

This event is curated and hosted by Rachel Ashenden, co-founder of The Debutante, a magazine which explores the continued legacies and relevance of women surrealists, and is Communications Officer at the National Galleries of Scotland. There will also be the opportunity to ask Emily questions about her book and writing practice.

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She is Perversity: Queer Currents within Twentieth-Century Discourses on Lilith by Brennan Kettelle

She is Perversity: Queer Currents within Twentieth-Century Discourses on Lilith

Antique wind spirit turned Adam’s first wife, Lilith holds the fascination of both contemporary academia and popular culture. Namely, feminist scholarship and interpretations of the Lilith myth, present her as a rebellious, patriarchy-smashing femme. However, scholarship on Lilith thus far has primarily positioned her within a heteronormative framework. As a result, more complex and nuanced inquiries into Lilith’s mythic story have been overshadowed. The lacuna my study aims to expose and address is the overlooked queer currents and connections within artistic, literary, political, and sociocultural discourses regarding the demoness.

First, my talk will provide a brief overview of Lilith’s presence within folklore, art, and literature from antiquity to the present. Second, the ways in which both psychoanalytic and feminist discourses have shaped and impacted present understandings of Lilith will be discussed. Lastly, I will focus on my research on Lilith, in which I investigate historical and discursive associations between Lilith and queerness. Specifically, I will discuss four significant historical associations between Lilith and queerness that occur within twentieth-century discourses – within the lesbian poetry of Renée Vivien (1877-1909), the Neo-Gnostic works of Columbian sex magician Samael Aun Weor (1917-1977), the antisemitic writings of American Satanic conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins (1923-2010), and finally within lesbian-feminist art and poetry in the late 1900s. In examining historic associations between Lilith and queerness, and utilizing both queer theory and monster theory, a more comprehensive understanding of the figure of Lilith is presented.

Bio

Brennan Kettelle holds a Research Master’s degree in Religious Studies, with a focus on Western esotericism (University of Amsterdam, 2021), as well as a Master’s degree in Gender and Cultural Studies (Simmons University, 2018). Brennan aims to utilize queer and feminist theories and methodologies in examining esotericism, investigating both queer currents within esoteric literature, orders, and figures, as well as esoteric themes within queer subcultures, politics, and histories. Her research interests include Lilith, nineteenth and twentieth-century occultism, sex magic, initiatory orders, esotericism and politics, and conspirituality.

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Myths of Gods & Goddesses – Bedtime Stories with Sharon Jacksies

Sharon Jacksties takes you on a pan-European mythological journey that ends in Britain and Ireland, a melting pot of our Celtic, Classical and Norse heritage. A traditional storyteller for several, but never enough decades, she will be telling stories from her latest book in which she has journeyed from being a writer of folk tale anthologies to this immersion in the myths of Gods and Goddesses. Join her as she gives a voice to our mythological landscape that speaks to us across the ages…

Layer by layer, talking through time itself, these tales of the ancient gods and goddesses make up the bedrock of the mythological landscapes of these islands. Through the ages this has been the meeting place of successive cultures, each bringing their own stories to glorify those beings with super human powers. Despite their immortality, these divinities are nevertheless vulnerable, depending on the voices and memories of people to celebrate their wondrous exploits. This evening you will meet some of the divinities once revered throughout Britain and Ireland, not through lists in some dusty encyclopaedia, but through the stories of their deeds, famous and infamous in equal part. The listener will enjoy the tales themselves and in the unfolding insights they bring to the different cultures that they represent.

Bio

Sharon Jacksties www.sharonjackstories.co.uk has been a professional storyteller for over 30 years. She runs storytelling projects with all kinds of groups in Somerset, London and Romania, and regularly teaches storytelling at Halsway Manor, England’s only residential centre for the traditional arts. She has won the national Crick Crack Grand Lying competition twice and is the author of three previous folk tales volumes.

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The Witch stories of William Bottrell by Charlotte MacKenzie

The Witch stories of William Bottrell

The reawakened Victorian concern to record and retell Cornish folk tales had its origins in the lives of historical individuals. So too did many of the stories they told. William Bottrell’s obituary in the Cornishman newspaper imagined the folklore characters he had made known walking mournfully behind his coffin. William Bottrell was one of the main informants of the folklorist Robert Hunt. Bottrell then emerged as a writer, publishing Cornish folklore and traditions in newspapers and journals, as well as three books, from the late 1860s. When William Bottrell heard or wrote about the White Witch and Charmer of Zennor, or the Witch of Kerrow, he was learning and writing partly about his own family history and Georgian individuals who lived in West Penwith. Where the esoteric, witchcraft, and magic seamlessly intertwined with industrialising early, mining technology, and the invention of the steam engine which brought the Victorian railways.

Bio

Charlotte MacKenzie is a writer and researcher in Cornwall. Currently writing a book on Cornish legends. Her recent publications focused on the lives and writing of women in Women writers and Georgian Cornwall (2020), and Mary Broad the documentary (2021). She is interested in the relationships between lived experience, history, and place in Cornwall and the impacts of Cornish participation in global exchanges, particularly in the eighteenth century. She is a former senior lecturer in History at Bath Spa University. Please feel free to contact her @HistoryCornwall.

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Ways of Thinking – From Crows To Children And Back Again – Professor Nicola Clayton

Ways of Thinking

From Crows To Children And Back Again

Nicola Clayton FRS

Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge

In this talk I will review some of the recent work on the remarkable cognitive capacities of food-caching corvids. Research on human developmental cognition suggests that children do not pass similar tests until they are at least four years of age in the case of the social cognition experiments, and eight years of age in the case of the tasks that tap into physical cognition. This developmental trajectory seems surprising~ intuitively, one might have thought that the social and planning tasks required more complex forms of cognitive process, namely Mental Time Travel and Theory of Mind. I will present our latest findings on physical cognition in children aged 4 to 11, which may reveal some intriguing clues to answer this mystery. I will also talk about the use of magic effects to reveal blind spots in seeing and roadblocks in seeing, some of which apply to both the jays and to humans. Future research aims to understand the mechanisms underlying these abilities in both humans and corvids, thereby exploring similarities and differences in these different and distantly related varieties of mind.

Bio

Nicola Clayton FRS is the Professor of Comparative Cognition and a University Teaching Officer in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Clare College. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010.

Her expertise as a scientist lies in the contemporary study of how animals and children think. This work has led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, particularly birds, and resulted in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two distantly related groups, the apes and the crows. She has also pioneered new procedures for the experimental study of memory and imagination in animals, investigating its relationship to human memory and consciousness, and how and when these abilities develop in young children.

In addition to scientific research and teaching, she is a dancer, specializing in tango and salsa. She is also Scientist in Residence at the Rambert Dance Company, collaborating with Mark Baldwin, the Artistic Director, on new choreographic works inspired by science (Comedy of Change, 2009; Seven For A Secret Never To Be Told, 2011; What Wild Ecstasy, 2012).

Her most recent collaboration with artist Clive Wilkins arose out of their mutual interest in imagination, and its consequences for consciousness, identity and memory. They also regularly dance tango together.