Daughters of Hecate

Zusatztext
This impressive collection challenges the seemingly common-sense association between women and magic. Drawing on literary and material evidence from across the ancient Mediterranean world, it powerfully demonstrates that the gendering of magic is neither natural nor universal, but is conditioned by the dynamics of local conflict and given form by historically specific taxonomies of knowledge.

Zusammenfassung
Daughters of Hecate unites for the first time research on the problem of gender and magic in three ancient Mediterranean societies: early Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture. The book illuminates the gendering of ancient magic by approaching the topic from three distinct disciplinary perspectives: literary stereotyping, the social application of magic discourse, and material culture. The authors probe the foundations of, processes, and motivations behind gendered stereotypes, beginning with Western culture's earliest associations of women and magic in the Bible and Homer's Odyssey. Daughters of Hecate provides a nuanced exploration of the topic while avoiding reductive approaches. In fact, the essays in this volume uncover complexities and counter-discourses that challenge, rather than reaffirm, many gendered stereotypes taken for granted and reified by most modern scholarship. By combining critical theoretical methods with research into literary and material evidence, Daughters of Hecate interrogates a false association that has persisted from antiquity, to early modern witch hunts, to the present day.

This impressive collection challenges the seemingly common-sense association between women and magic. Drawing on literary and material evidence from across the ancient Mediterranean world, it powerfully demonstrates that the gendering of magic is neither natural nor universal, but is conditioned by the dynamics of local conflict and given form by historically specific taxonomies of knowledge.

Autorentext
Kimberly B. Stratton is an associate professor in the College of Humanities at Carleton University. She holds a B.A. in English and Religion from Barnard College, an M.T.S. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in the history of religions in late antiquity from Columbia University. She has also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research covers the fields of early Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, and Greco-Roman religion, focusing on the dynamics of identity formation, discourse, and social construction at the intersection of those ancient cultures. Dayna S. Kalleres is an associate professor in the Program for the Study of Religion and the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. She did her Ph.D. in program for the History of Early Christianity at Brown University; prior to that, she received a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Classics at Indiana University. Her research covers the fields of Greco-Roman Religions and Early to late antique Christianities; her focal interests include magic and religion, ritual studies, demonology and the urban sphere.

Klappentext

Daughters of Hecate presents a diverse collection of essays on the topic of women and magic in the ancient Mediterranean world. The book gathers investigations by leading scholars from the fields of Classics, Judaic Studies, and early Christianity, illuminating as well as interrogating the persistent associations of women with magic.

Zusammenfassung
Daughters of Hecate unites for the first time research on the problem of gender and magic in three ancient Mediterranean societies: early Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture. The book illuminates the gendering of ancient magic by approaching the topic from three distinct disciplinary perspectives: literary stereotyping, the social application of magic discourse, and material culture. The authors probe the foundations of, processes, and motivations behind gendered stereotypes, beginning with Western culture's earliest associations of women and magic in the Bible and Homer's Odyssey. Daughters of Hecate provides a nuanced exploration of the topic while avoiding reductive approaches. In fact, the essays in this volume uncover complexities and counter-discourses that challenge, rather than reaffirm, many gendered stereotypes taken for granted and reified by most modern scholarship. By combining critical theoretical methods with research into literary and material evidence, Daughters of Hecate interrogates a false association that has persisted from antiquity, to early modern witch hunts, to the present day.

Inhalt

• Preface

• 1. Interrogating the Magic-Gender Connection - Kimberly B. Stratton

• Part I. Fiction and Fantasy: Gendering Magic in Literature

• 2. From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and the Roman Witch in Classical Literature - Barbette Stanley Spaeth
• 3. "The Most Worthy of Women is a Mistress of Magic": Women as Witches and Ritual Practitioners in 1 Enoch and Rabbinic Sources - Rebecca Lesses
• 4. Gendering Heavenly Secrets? Women, Angels, and the Problem of Misogyny and "Magic" - Annette Yoshiko Reed
• 5. Magic, Abjection, and Gender in Roman Literature - Kimberly B. Stratton

• Part II. Gender and Magic Discourse in Practice

• 6. Magic Accusations Against Women in Tacitus's Annals - Elizabeth Ann Pollard
• 7. Drunken Hags with Amulets and Prostitutes with Erotic Spells: The Re-Feminization of Magic in Late Antique Christian Homilies - Dayna S. Kalleres
• 8. The Bishop, the Pope, and the Prophetess: Rival Ritual Experts in Third-Century Cappadocia - Ayse Tuzlak
• 9. Living Images of the Divine: Female Theurgists in Late Antiquity - Nicola Denzey Lewis
• 10. Sorceresses and Sorcerers in Early Christian Tours of Hell - Kirsti Barrett Copeland

• Part III. Gender, Magic, and the Material Record

• 11. The Social Context of Women's Erotic Magic in Antiquity - David Frankfurter
• 12. Cheating Women: Curse Tablets and Roman Wives - Pauline Ripat
• 13. Saffron, Spices, and Sorceresses: Magic Bowls and the Bavli - Yaakov Elman
• 14. Victimology or: How to Deal With Untimely Death - Fritz Graf
• 15. A Gospel Amulet for Joannia (P.Oxy. VIII 1151) - AnneMarie Luijendijk