This book gives an analytical review of the history of witch-hunt historiography. So far not much attention has been paid to how the European witch-hunts have been studied and explained in some 150 years of academic research on the issue. The history of the approaches and explanations in witch-hunt research fundamentally contributes not only to our understanding of the bizarre phenomenon in European history but also contributes to understanding of cultural as well as academic trends which heavily direct any research even when scholars are not cognisant of their underlying premises. How and why the picture of witch-hunts has been changing in scholarly works and text books is as illuminating an issue as the proper explanations offered by the research works.
Contributors include: Rune Blix Hagen, Ronald Hutton, Gunnar W. Knutsen, Marianna G. Muravyeva, Marko Nenonen, Raisa Maria Toivo, Charles Zika
Marko Nenonen, Ph.D. (1992) in history, University of Tampere, Finland, is a University Lecturer at the University of Tampere. He has published extensively, incl. several articles in peer-reviewed journals and book compilations. www.markonenonen.net.
Raisa Maria Toivo, Ph.D. (2006) in history, University of Tampere, Finland, is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Tampere. She is the author of "Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society. Finland and the Wider European Experience" (2008).
List of Charts and Tables
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Chapter 1. Challenging the Paradigm of Witch-Hunt Historiography (Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo)
Chapter 2. The Dubious History of the Witch-Hunts (Marko Nenonen)
Chapter 3. Images and Witchcraft Studies: A Short History (Charles Zika)
Chapter 4. Gender, Sex and Cultures of Trouble in Witchcraft Studies: European Historiography with Special Reference to Finland (Raisa Maria Toivo)
Chapter 5. Russian Witchcraft on Trial: Historiography and Methodology for Studying Russian Witches (Marianna G. Muravyeva)
Chapter 6. Witchcraft and Ethnicity: A Critical Perspective on Sami Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Northern Norway (Rune Blix Hagen)
Chapter 7. Topics of Persecution: Witchcraft Historiography in the Iberian World (Gunnar W. Knutsen)
Chapter 8. Witchcraft and Modernity (Ronald Hutton)
Index
List of Charts and Tables
Chart 4_1. The number of accused witches and the percentage of male witches in Finland 1540-1699
Table 5_1. Gender of practicing witches in Russia, 1700â1785 (reported cases)
Table 5_2. Witchcraft cases in Russia
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The book is primarily intended at a scholarly audience of historians, sociologists as well as ethnographers and professionals from political and religious studies. Also, the book will be eminently suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate course reading.