ARAS 216 - Magic and Witchcraft in the Ancient World

CR: 3
This course explores the evidence - material, textual, and visual - for magic and witchcraft in the Ancient World, focusing in particular on the practices of Greece and Rome, with comparative course studies drawn from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Biblical texts. By considering these practices as a form of non-normative belief expression, particularly as compared to state sanctioned religious practices in Greece and Rome, the course examines the relationship between such practices and the cultures that produced them, suggesting that practices framed as non-normative by textual sources reflect ongoing shifts in perspectives on gender, power, and otherness with ramifications echoing through political, social, and economic institutions, as well as through more normative religious systems. Offered alternate years. III.O, V.7