Digital Event Type: Zoom Lecture

Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea: Witchcraft and Witch-hunting in Early America Professor Leslie Lindenauer

This Zoom lecture will explore witchcraft and witch-hunting in New England in the seventeenth century, in communities shaped by a profound belief in the devil and his minions.

Mention Salem Massachusetts and most people will make an immediate connection to the witch trials of 1692, when the courts sentenced 19 people to hang for the crime of witchcraft and tortured a 20th to death. Salem unofficially, and perhaps a little glibly, calls itself “The Witch City.” Less known, even in the United States, is that dozens and perhaps hundreds of people were tried for witchcraft in New England beginning over four decades before the events in Salem. At least sixteen people were executed for the crime, most of them women. This lecture will explore witchcraft and witch-hunting in New England in the seventeenth century, in communities shaped by a profound belief in the devil and his minions. The talk will also explore the idea that witch-hunting was women-hunting, and the difficulty Americans have coming to terms with dark periods in our history.

Leslie Lindenauer is a Professor in the Department of History and Non-Western Cultures at Western Connecticut State University, where she teaches courses in early American history, gender studies, public history, and American Studies. Her book I Could Not Call Her Mother: The Stepmother in American Popular Culture, 1750-1960 was published by Lexington Books in 2014. Before her career in academe, Leslie worked for a couple of decades as an educator and administrator at a number of history museums in the Northeast.

Vodún Secrecy and the Search for Divine Power – Timothy R. Landry by Zoom

Tourists to Ouidah, a city on the coast of the Republic of Bénin, in West Africa, typically visit a few well-known sites of significance to the Vodún religion—the Python Temple, where Dangbé, the python spirit, is worshipped, and King Kpasse’s sacred forest, which is the seat of the Vodún deity known as Lokò. However, other, less familiar places, such as the palace of the so-called supreme chief of Vodún in Bénin, are also rising in popularity as tourists become increasingly adventurous and as more Vodún priests and temples make themselves available to foreigners in the hopes of earning extra money.

In this zoom lecture Timothy R. Landry examines the connections between local Vodún priests and spiritual seekers who travel to Bénin—some for the snapshot, others for full-fledged initiation into the religion. He argues that the ways in which the Vodún priests and tourists negotiate the transfer of confidential, sacred knowledge create its value. The more secrecy that surrounds Vodún ritual practice and material culture, the more authentic, coveted, and, consequently, expensive that knowledge becomes. Landry writes as anthropologist and initiate, having participated in hundreds of Vodún ceremonies, rituals, and festivals.

Examining the role of money, the incarnation of deities, the limits of adaptation for the transnational community, and the belief in spirits, sorcery, and witchcraft, Vodún ponders the ethical implications of producing and consuming culture by local and international agents. Highlighting the ways in which racialization, power, and the legacy of colonialism affect the procurement and transmission of secret knowledge in West Africa and beyond, Landry demonstrates how, paradoxically, secrecy is critically important to Vodún’s global expansion.

Timothy R. Landry teaches anthropology and religious studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

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Traditional Fairies – Professor Ronald Hutton Zoom Lecture

Examining the older, darker, more scary and more serious world of traditional British and Irish peoples who lived alongside fairies, elves, gnomes, brownies and pixies and had to deal with them.

This evening Ronald Hutton takes us to fairyland: not that of Victorian and Edwardian children’s stories, or even that of Shakespeare, but the older, darker, more scary and more serious world of traditional British and Irish peoples who lived alongside fairies, elves, gnomes, brownies and pixies and had to deal with them. His mission is to discover what these peoples believed about these beings and the coping strategies that they adopted towards them: and how these differed from the beliefs and relations found in later literary fairy tales. He also considers the question of the value of telling stories about the traditional fairies and the meanings that these had for the people who told them. Almost everybody knows that traditional fairies were seldom cute, but how dangerous were they? Who were the sorts of people who made relations with them and why? What could those relations feel like? These are more of the issues which will be discussed tonight.

Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.

Carl Hoffman on the Death of Michael Rockefeller – Zoom Lecture

Carl Hoffman will talk about his book – Savage Harvest – The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world and his powerful, influential family guessing for years. Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story.

Despite exhaustive searches, no trace of Rockefeller was ever found. Soon after his disappearance, rumors surfaced that he’d been killed and ceremonially eaten by the local Asmat—a native tribe of warriors whose complex culture was built around sacred, reciprocal violence, head hunting, and ritual cannibalism. The Dutch government and the Rockefeller family denied the story, and Michael’s death was officially ruled a drowning. Yet doubts lingered. Sensational rumors and stories circulated, fueling speculation and intrigue for decades. The real story has long waited to be told—until now.

Retracing Rockefeller’s steps, award-winning journalist Carl Hoffman traveled to the jungles of New Guinea, immersing himself in a world of headhunters and cannibals, secret spirits and customs, and getting to know generations of Asmat. Through exhaustive archival research, he uncovered never-before-seen original documents and located witnesses willing to speak publically after fifty years.

In Savage Harvest he finally solves this decades-old mystery and illuminates a culture transformed by years of colonial rule, whose people continue to be shaped by ancient customs and lore. Combining history, art, colonialism, adventure, and ethnography, Savage Harvest is a mesmerizing whodunit, and a fascinating portrait of the clash between two civilizations that resulted in the death of one of America’s richest and most powerful scions.

Carl Hoffman is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest, which was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” a NY Times best seller, one of the Washington Post’s 50 notable books of 2014, a Kirkus best book of 2014 and the number one non-fiction book of 2014 on Amazon.com. The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes, was one of the Wall Street Journal’s ten best books of 2010. He is a former contributing editor to National Geographic Traveler and Wired magazines and his narrative pieces have also appeared in Smithsonian, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure and many other magazines. He has traveled on assignment to eighty countries and is the father of three young adults. He lives in Washington, D.C

Zoroastrianism and the Parsis – Professor Almut Hintze – Zoom Lecture

Zoroastrianism and the Parsis

This illustrated talk highlights some aspects of the history, teachings and religious practice of a little known religion, Zoroastrianism. Once the official creed of mighty Persian Empires, Zoroastrianism probably had an influence on the religious ideas of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It survives to the present day as the faith of small but influential minorities in Iran, India and diaspora communities around the globe.

Professor Almut Hintze

Almut Hintze is Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism at SOAS, University of London, and Fellow of the British Academy. She specialises in Zoroastrianism and the tradition of its sacred texts, of which she has published several editions. She currently directs a collaborative project on the Multimedia Yasna, funded by European Research Council (2016–2021), to produce an interactive film of a complete performance of the core ritual of the Zoroastrian religion, the Yasna, electronic tools for editing Avestan texts, and an edition with a translation, commentary and dictionary of the Yasna.

Women Surrealists with Professor Dawn Ades on Zoom

Whitney Chadwick’s pioneering study Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (1985) transformed the position of the women associated with the movement. It was controversial – Dorothea Tanning and Leonor Fini both felt being singled out would perpetuate their ‘exile’, and Meret Oppenheim refused permission to reproduce any of her work in the book. They were not alone in questioning the legitimacy of separating their work from that of male surrealists, rejecting the implication that it was conditioned by their gender, and insisting that the creative spirit is androgynous. However, there is no doubt that since the publication of Chadwick’s book artists like Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Dora Maar, Frida Kahlo and Claude Cahun, all closely associated with Surrealism at some point in their lives, have become hugely popular and if anything more familiar than their male colleagues.

It’s pleasing to see justice done, of course, but the question remains, why were the many women associated with the movement ignored or sidelined for so long? It used invariably to be the male faces that defined the movement. What might it have to do with one of the central paradoxes of Surrealism, that Woman was elevated as the muse and object of desire, given a central and revolutionary role in the aim of transforming the world, but women were often in practice denied a voice? What has the vastly increased visibility of women artists and their work in recent years added to our understanding of Surrealism? I propose to take a sideways look at the issues, and focus on some striking female alliances, and one instance of discord: the long friendship, shared ideas and occasional collaborations between Carrington and Varo; the union of the artist Alice Paalen (Rahon) and the poet Valentine Penrose; the joint work of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore; and the curious and one-sided rivalry between Frida Kahlo and María Izquierdo. These will throw light on different ways in which women artists responded to, challenged or ignored the male surrealists’ attitudes to Woman and women.

Dawn Ades is Professor Emerita of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex. She writes about Dada, Surrealism, photography, and women artists among other things, and has organised or co-curated many exhibitions, including Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (1978); Art in Latin America: the Modern Era 1820-1980 (1989); Dalí’s Optical Illusions (2000); Salvador Dalí: the Centenary Exhibition (2004); Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (2006); Close-Up: Proximity and Defamiliarisation in Art, Photography and Film (2008); and Dalí/Duchamp, (Royal Academy and the Dalí Museum 2017-18). Apart from the catalogues associated with these exhibitions, publications include Photomontage (1986), Marcel Duchamp (with N. Cox and D.Hopkins, 1999), A Dada Reader (2006) and Writings on Art and Anti-art (2015).

Charles Waterton, Ecentric Taxidermist by Dr. Pat Morris, Live on Zoom

Charles Waterton used his skill to fabricate imaginary creatures, forming three-dimensional religious and political cartoons that lampooned issues and people that attracted his ire.

Charles Waterton was a ‘larger than life’ person, a notable 19th century naturalist and an inventive taxidermist, now regarded as one of Britain’s great eccentrics. Few of his contemporaries engaged in such a variety of mischief and adventure. His activities, and the aggravation he caused, continue to fascinate, inspire and amuse even 150 years after his death. His famous book Wanderings in South America, published in 1825, excited acclaim, argument and derision in equal volume. It featured a mischievous taxidermy fabrication (The Nondescript), a new species of mammal or a tiny human; Waterton wouldn’t say. Instead, he confided to his physician “I do enjoy a bit of stuffing” and went on to create a collection of weird creatures as well as ‘normal’ specimens. Taxidermy was his passion and he was rudely dismissive of contemporary taxidermists. He used his skill to fabricate imaginary creatures, forming three-dimensional religious and political cartoons that lampooned issues and people that attracted his ire. His surviving specimens offer an insight into the mind of a controversial and idiosyncratic nineteenth century naturalist. This talk focuses on his taxidermy, a topic that has never been critically examined in any of the many published biographies, despite the key role it played in Waterton’s life.

Dr Pat Morris was Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Royal Holloway, University of London, and retired (early) in 2002 to spend more time with his taxidermy. He taught many students who now work in wildlife conservation, and also taught evening classes for adults for 20 years. He is well known for his studies on mammals, especially hedgehogs, dormice, water voles and red squirrels. He is a past Chairman of the Mammal Society and holder of its Silver Medal. He was a Council Member of the National Trust for 15 years and Chairman of its Nature Conservation Advisory Panel. He is President of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, a former Vice President of the London Wildlife Trust. He served on a Government Enquiry into aspects of the badgers and TB problem and for 3 years was co-Director of the International Summer School on the Breeding and Conservation of Endangered species, based at Durrell Zoo in Jersey.

He has published over 70 scientific papers, mostly on mammals and written about 20 books on bats, dormice, ecology of lakes and general natural history, with total sales of around 250,000. His popular book on hedgehogs has remained in print since 1983, his New Naturalist monograph on the hedgehog was published in 2018. He was a consultant to major publishers and the BBC Natural History Unit, for whom he also contributed radio and TV programmes for 20 years. He has travelled to more than 30 countries, including five expeditions to Ethiopia and 19 visits to the USA covering 47 of the States.

In his spare time he has pursued a longstanding interest in the history of taxidermy and was appointed the first Honorary Life Member of the Guild of Taxidermists. He published papers and 8 books on this topic and serves as one of the Government’s taxidermy inspectors for assessing age and authenticity of antique taxidermy in connection with CITES controls. The Society for the History of Natural History awarded him its Founder’s Medal and he was made MBE by the Queen in the 2015 New Year’s Honours List and has a devoted (biologist) wife, married in 1978.

He speaks in a purely personal capacity and not on behalf of any of the organisations with which he is involved, past or present.

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M.r. James Fireside Ghost Stories with Robert Lloyd Parry, Live on Zoom

“If any of my stories succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained…”

Montague Rhodes James (1862 – 1936) more than succeeded in this modest ambition. Over a century after their first publication, his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary remain the most admired supernatural tales in the English language. James first performed them to friends at Christmas in King’s College, Cambridge in the year up to WW1. Since 2005 Robert Lloyd Parry has sought to bring this tradition back to life.

In A View from a Hill a pair of old binoculars reveal the grisly history of an idyllic stretch of English landscape. The story lasts about 40 mins. Afterwards, if you are good, this will be followed up by a reading of a bonus shorter work by M R James.

Storyteller: Robert Lloyd Parry has travelled widely in the UK and USA with his candlelit M R James performances, which have been covered by The New Yorker, The Fortean Times, The Spectator, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Morning Star. In 2014 he appeared as the author in Mark Gatiss’s BBC2 Documentary ‘M R James: Ghost Writer.’ For more details see www.nunkie.co.uk

A Dark Muse – Writers & The Occult – Gary Lachman Zoom Lecture

Gary Lachman will look at how occult thought and ideas influenced some of the most important and influential writers and poets of the past two centuries, from Goethe’s Faust to the allusive modernist fragments of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, with quite a few illustrious names in between. J.K. Huysmans and the Black Mass, the alchemical experiments of August Strindberg, the Satanism of Arthur Rimbaud, and the psychotic possession of Guy De Maupassant, are only some of the examples of how occult visions led to some of the greatest works of western literature. This lecture will look at some of the ideas behind occultism and at how they found literary form in the works of some of the western canon’s greatest figures.

Gary Lachman is the author of many books about consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including The Return of Holy Russia, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, and Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson. He writes for several journals in the US, UK, and Europe, lectures around the world and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a former life he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before moving to London in 1996 and becoming a full time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a metaphysical book shop, taught English literature, and was Science Writer for UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be reached at www.garylachman.co.uk, www.facebook.com/GVLachman/ and twitter.com/GaryLachman

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A Look at Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy with Joanna Ebenstein

Live from Mexico on Zoom Joanna Ebenstein will tell us about how

Walter Potter (1835-1918), an amateur English taxidermist of no great expertise, became famous as an icon of Victorian whimsy with his anthropomorphic creations. Multi-legged kittens, two-headed lambs and a bewildering assortment of curios crammed his tiny museum in Bramber, Sussex, and inspired future generations of taxidermists to come.

The curious world of Potter’s museum was permanently closed to the public in the ’70s, after which time it was variously re-established before being auctioned off in 2003. It was reported that a £1M bid by Damien Hirst to keep the collection intact was refused, but in 2010 many of Potter’s key pieces were exhibited by the artist Sir Peter Blake at London’s ‘Museum of Everything’, attracting over 30,000 visitors in 6 weeks.

The subsequent dispersal of Potter’s works has meant the loss of a truly unique Victorian legacy. Together with co-author Dr Pat Morris, Joanna Ebenstein preserves and celebrates the collection with new photographs of Potter’s best-loved works in their book Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy.

Tonight, learn more about Potter with a short talk by Ebenstein paired with a screening of The Man Who Married Kittens, a short documentary look at one of Victorian England’s most enigmatic and quirky characters. Amateur taxidermist, Walter Potter, became an unlikely success by putting his creatures in human positions and scenarios, referred to as anthropomorphic taxidermy. Potter’s Museum, filled with his creations and collection of oddities and curiosities dazzled millions for over a hundred years until the collection’s unfortunate separation in 2003. While largely about the man and his creations, the film also takes a look at the obsessive nature of collecting, as well as the controversial history of stuffing dead animals

Joanna Ebenstein is a Mexico based writer, curator, artist and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was cofounder and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. She is author of The Anatomical Venus, editor of the forthcoming Death: A Graveside Companion (October 2017), and co-author, with Dr Pat Morris, of Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy. She works regularly with such institutions as The Wellcome Collection and Amsterdam’s Vrolik Museum, and her writing and photography have been published and exhibited internationally. Her work explores the intersections of art and medicine, death and culture, and the objective and subjective.

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