Event Category: Folklore

Witch Fulfilment: The Witch as Theatrical Type – Jane Barnette – Zoom

Witch Fulfilment: The Witch as Theatrical Type

What wishes do performances fulfill when they include witchy characters onstage? My research centers the Witch as a theatrical type on twenty-first century North American stages and screens, with attention to casting and adaptation dramaturgy.

Witch representation matters because witches are not figments of imagination or inhuman monsters. Understanding the humanity of witches suggests that if the Witch can be analyzed as a theatrical type reiterated through performance, then those of us who make theatre and other kinds of popular performance culture have a responsibility to represent witches humanely.

In this discussion, we will review iconic examples of Witches onstage, considering both the character and the actor playing the role. From depictions of the Wicked Witch to Medea to the Weird Sisters and beyond, the representation of Witches in the contemporary adaptations I examine all reveal crucial insights about the fears and desires we have about the hidden powers of minoritarian subjects.

Bio:

Jane is the Head of Dramaturgy and a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Kansas (KU). Her recent book Witch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen (Routledge 2024) explores the Witch as a theatrical type, using feminist, queer, and adaptation dramaturgy methodologies. She is also the author of Adapturgy: The Dramaturg’s Art and Theatrical Adaptation (SIU Press 2018). A freelance dramaturg and director, Barnette directed a double-cast version of John Proctor is the Villain in March 2025 at KU’s Inge Theater. Barnette’s next book, co-authored with Henry Bial, The Dramaturgy of Musical Revisal, is forthcoming from Routledge later this year.

Image:

Image: Cavendish, Morton (1909). The Art of Theatrical Make-up, London: Adam and Charles Black. Public Domain.

Curated & Hosted by:

Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She lives in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesvos.

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Haunted Waters: River Spirits, Drowned Ghosts & Water-Witches – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

Haunted Waters: River Spirits, Drowned Ghosts & Water-Witches

Where something ancient watches from beneath the surface—hungry, patient, and older than the land itself.

In every culture on earth, water is a threshold—a mirror, a mouth, a silent witness—and often, a predator. This immersive lecture journeys through the world’s most haunting aquatic folklore, from the still pools of rural China where drowned maidens rise for revenge, to the river-goddesses of West and Central Africa who demand offerings, to Japan’s kappa lurking beneath bridges with a child’s laugh and a demon’s appetite.

Meet the Slavic Rusalka whose beauty kills; the Nøkken of Scandinavia who sings travellers to their deaths; the storm-witches of the Baltic who can raise waves with a whisper; and the restless river-ghosts of Eastern Europe and East Asia, forever tied to the waters that claimed them.

Drawing on global folklore, mythic ecology, and the anthropology of water-spirits, we reveal why lakes, rivers, wells, estuaries, and shorelines are universally feared as borders between worlds. Discover the ritual offerings once cast into sacred springs, the ceremonies performed to calm offended rivers, and the bone-deep belief that the drowned do not sleep—they linger.

A night of mythology, terror, beauty, and the uncanny pull of the deep: a lecture on the ancient, living waters that have shaped human imagination for thousands of years

Speaker Bio:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Ossian 2: James Macpherson’s Epic Journey – Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart – Zoom

Ossian 2: James Macpherson’s Epic Journey

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the landscape of Scotland and the way of life of its inhabitants were changing fast, under the influence of the Enlightenment and the ingenious innovators of the Agricultural Revolution. In thinking about and trying to understand these changes, contemporary Scots turned to accounts from other lands, and accounts from history, in the hope that these comparisons might tell them about themselves and where they stood.

Lowland thinkers also looked at their neighbours in the Highlands. Some of them at least viewed the Scottish Gaels who lived there as ‘contemporary ancestors’, the original Scots, supposedly still living in a patriarchal, primitive, semi-barbarian clan-based society. But how to find out more about the mysteries of their history?

In 1760 the literary nation was electrified by the claims of a twenty-four-year-old from Badenoch in the eastern Highlands: that in his native Gaelic oral tradition he had collected fragments of an epic dating back one and a half millennia. Over the next three years James Macpherson would publish what he claimed were authentic prose translations of these ancient poems, telling of fierce, heroic battles fought by Highland warriors in a gloomy, sublime landscape. But Macpherson’s characters, women as well as men, were strangely contemporary too: noble, sensitive, emotional, even civilised. These warriors fought, and died, for love as well as for glory. With his poems of Ossian, it seemed that Macpherson had given Scotland, and all of northern Europe, literature to rival the Mediterranean classical epics of Homer and Vergil.

In this talk we’ll investigate the life, work, and legacy of James Macpherson. How did he create his epics – and who helped him? What poems did he draw upon for inspiration, from his own Gaelic culture? What impact did Macpherson’s poems have, in Britain and beyond—and on Scottish Gaelic culture too? And, of course, how did the fierce Ossianic controversy over the epic’s authenticity first begin?

Speaker Bio:

From the Isle of Lewis, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a leading scholar of Scottish Gaelic language, folklore, and oral tradition. He is Associate Professor at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands, where he lectures in Scottish Highland history and material culture, and Gaelic literature and folklore. He has written numerous academic articles, and is often interviewed on radio and television.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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The Dead Who Walk in Dreams: A Global History of Dream-Ghosts – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

The Dead Who Walk in Dreams: A Global History of Dream-Ghosts

When the dead step into your sleep: messages, warnings, and mythic encounters.

Across millennia, the dead have visited the living in dreams: to warn, to guide, to accuse, to soothe—or simply to remind us they remain. Drawing on her upcoming book Dreamwalking, Lena Heide-Brennand explores dream-ghosts from ancient Mesopotamia to Viking Age Norway, from Arctic spirit-visitations to Victorian séances held entirely in sleep.

Travel through the shadowy terrain of hypnagogic visions, ancestor-dreams, revenant-warnings, and the strange psychological landscapes where love, grief and the supernatural blur.

Discover why so many cultures believed the dream-soul leaves the body at night, how the newly dead communicate through symbolic dream language, and what it means when someone you’ve lost appears at your bedside at 3am.

This lecture blends folklore, anthropology, psychology, and the occult—illuminating the secret nights of humanity.

Speaker Bio:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Ossian 3: Ossian’s Last Stand? – Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart – Zoom

Ossian 3: Ossian’s Last Stand?

For over a century after the publication of James Macpherson’s Ossianic epics, controversy raged over their authenticity. Had the young man really discovered precious heroic poems handed down in Highland oral tradition for nearly 1,500 years, or was Macpherson nothing more than a forger, a chancer guilty of an audacious literary confidence trick that misled readers across the globe?

In this concluding talk, we’ll look at how the literary battle lines were drawn on both sides, and how the controversy was fought out, in books, magazines, letters, and reports. We’ll examine the arguments and evidence used—especially how some supporters tried to convince themselves and others that Macpherson’s claims held water. For them, nothing less than the reputation of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd and its people was at stake.

In this talk, we’ll meet a motley cast of characters, including Church of Scotland ministers, a forgotten female Gaelic writer, Agricultural Sir John Sinclair, an emigrant bishop, an enthusiastic Canadian student, a high-flying civil servant, and a penniless Highland aristocrat—before trying to answer the enduring question: ‘how much of Macpherson is the real thing, and how much of it an epic hoax?’

Speaker Bio:

From the Isle of Lewis, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a leading scholar of Scottish Gaelic language, folklore, and oral tradition. He is Associate Professor at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands, where he lectures in Scottish Highland history and material culture, and Gaelic literature and folklore. He has written numerous academic articles, and is often interviewed on radio and television.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Ossian 1: The Scottish Highlands: Epic Mode – Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart – Zoom

Ossian 1: The Scottish Highlands: Epic Mode

In this opening talk we’ll investigate the heroic stories and ballads of the Scottish Highlands telling of the adventures of the warrior band known as the Fèinn, and their leader Fionn mac Cumhail or Finn MacCool. These exciting, complex, and often moving stories are part of the common heritage of Scotland and Ireland. The earliest texts of the ‘Finn Cycle’ were composed well over a millennium ago, and the tales have been told and retold, written and read (and filmed!), added to and adapted, from then till now.

The stories can sparkle with life and creative energy. The Fèinn fight enemy invaders: mortal kings of Lochlann, or Greece, or even of the Entire World. They struggle to defeat otherworldly hags on land and sea. Again, disagreements among the heroes themselves can sometimes lead to quarrels and even murder. But these tales are about far more than violence alone: they tell of romantic encounters and love-affairs, of hunts and heroic quests, of romance, enchantment, and foolishness.

For previous generations, these tales were not counted as fiction, but as historical fact. The stories of these warriors were entwined with Scottish Highland genealogies and local landscapes, with proverbs and everyday life. Looking beyond the performances of the tales, we can appreciate just how deeply the lore of the Fèinn was woven into Scottish Gaelic culture.

Speaker Bio:

Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a leading Scottish scholar of Gaelic language, folklore, and oral tradition. He is Associate Professor in Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh and has long been associated with School of Scottish Studies, where he has contributed extensively to research on narrative tradition, belief, and vernacular culture.

His work focuses particularly on Gaelic storytelling, popular belief, charm traditions, and the cultural worlds of the Highlands and Islands, combining rigorous scholarship with a deep respect for living oral heritage. Stiùbhart is known for his ability to bridge academic research and community knowledge, often working closely with tradition bearers and archival materials alike.

In addition to his academic publications, he has played an important role in public folklore work in Scotland, including education, heritage projects, and the preservation and interpretation of Gaelic intangible cultural heritage. His scholarship is marked by clarity, cultural sensitivity, and a strong commitment to keeping Gaelic voices central to the study of Scotland’s past and present.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Good Dragons are Rare: An Inquiry into Dragons Old and New – Professor Thomas Honegger – Zoom

Good Dragons are Rare: An Inquiry into Dragons Old and New

Prof. Tolkien once noted: “There are in any case many heroes but very few good dragons.” (M&C 17) Modern readers may wonder what he meant by ‘good dragons’ – certainly not virtuous or ‘morally good’ dragons, which are, basically, a modern invention. As Tolkien himself points out, a ‘good dragon’ is a beast that displays the typical characteristics of draco without becoming a mere (allegorical) representative of draconitas (i.e. the vice of avarice). Yet ‘death by allegory’ is not the only danger literary dragons have to face. My talk looks at the symbolic and narrative functions of dragons in Germanic literature throughout the ages. As will be shown, most dragons before (but also after) Tolkien do not live up to their full literary potential as protagonist, but remain either allegorical figures of evil, devices for testing the hero’s qualities, steeds, or Disney-pets. It is only such dragons as Smaug in The Hobbit or Chrysophylax Dives in Farmer Giles of Ham who live up to Tolkien’s idea of what a ‘good dragon’ should be: a dangerous protagonist in its own right partaking in the rich symbolism of the different traditions without being reduced to these ‘symbolic’ functions only.

Speaker Bio:

Thomas Honegger is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. His research focuses on medieval English and Germanic literature, myth, monsters, and the afterlives of medieval narratives in modern fantasy. He is internationally recognised for his work on dragons, legendary creatures, heroism, and the complex relationship between symbolism and storytelling from the Middle Ages to Tolkien and beyond. A gifted lecturer and sharp cultural historian, Honegger is particularly interested in how medieval imagination continues to shape modern fantasy worlds, refusing simple allegory in favour of richly ambivalent, intellectually challenging interpretations.

Curated & Hosted By:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Egyptian mythology – Garry Shaw – Zoom

Egyptian mythology

To the ancient Egyptians, mythology was more than tales of past heroes and the activities of gods, it was something lived each day – mythology explained the world around them, and made it understandable. In this lecture, we’ll explore the fascinating myths and legends of ancient Egypt while travelling along the Nile from Aswan to Alexandria. As we stop at key locations, we’ll meet the gods and goddesses worshipped there, learn about their mythology, and see the monuments associated with them. We will delve into creation myths, featuring the divine craftsman Ptah and the sun god Re-Atum; myths of the world around us, explaining how divine forces influence the sky, sun, moon, and the Nile; and myths of the afterlife realm, demons, and ghosts. As well as stories of famous divinities, like Re, Horus, Thoth, Isis, Osiris, and Seth, the talk will also recount lesser known myths, such as those from the Book of the Faiyum. This lecture is based on Shaw’s book: Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria (Thames & Hudson, 2021).

Speaker Bio:

Garry J. Shaw is an author and journalist, covering archaeology, history, world heritage, exhibitions, and travel. He writes on the latest research and breaking news, and has written features on diverse topics, from the world’s most mysterious manuscripts and the Near East after the Bronze Age collapse, to heritage destruction in Yemen and heritage crime in post-revolution Egypt. He has a PhD in Egyptology, and is the author of eight books including Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria (Thames & Hudson, 2021) and The Story of Tutankhamun: An Intimate Life of the Boy Who Became King (Yale University Press, 2022). His newest book, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World’s Mysterious Manuscripts (Yale University Press, 2025), is a New Yorker best book of 2025.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Ghosts of the North: The Haunted Folklore of Norway & Sápmi – Lena Heide-Brennand – Zoom

Ghosts of the North: The Haunted Folklore of Norway & Sápmi

 From Draugr to Stallo: Spirits at the Edge of the Arctic Night.

Step into the spectral North, where the boundaries between the living and the dead are thin as ice. In this eerie, richly illustrated lecture, we lead you into the haunted world of Scandinavia and Sápmi ghost traditions—creaking with drowned sailors, mountain spirits, shamans, and the dreaded draugr, who rise from the sea with frozen rage.

Discover how Sámi noaidi communicated with the underworld through drums and trance, why the Norwegian coast, according to folklore,is filled with ghost ships and eerie spirits, and how the eternal twilight of the Arctic produced some of the most chilling spectral traditions on earth.

A night of folklore, death-myth, Arctic magic—and the ghosts who never went away.

Perfect for: lovers of folklore, hauntings, indigenous spirit-worlds, and the uncanny North.

Image: Theodor Kittelsen Draugen, ca. 1891 (The Sea-Ghost)

Speaker Bio:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Heroine or Succubus? Blodeuwedd, Taliesin, and Artificial Life – Dr Mark Williams – Zoom

Heroine or Succubus? Blodeuwedd, Taliesin, and Artificial Life

‘Blodeuwedd is one of the unforgettable heroines of Welsh mythology. In the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi (c.1100) she is created out of flowers to be the wife of the hero Lleu of the Skilful Hand, whom she ultimately betrays. A century of commentators and creative people have seen her as a feminist figure, who follows her own heart and desires and who suffers a cruel and unjust punishment by being turned into an owl. This talk ranges widely over the theme of the artificial women in western literature – Pandora, Pygmalion’s famous statue – to suggest ways in which the original audience of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi might have interpreted the story—ways which might be strikingly different and less approving than the one which has become normal in our own cultural context. Is she a misunderstood heroine—or a succubus?!

Speaker Bio:

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and a specialist in the Celtic literatures and languages. He is the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016) and The Celtic Myths that Shape the Way We Think (2021). He is also a qualified Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in Oxford.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

Image: Drawing by Lena HB

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