GERMAN 363.  WITCHES: MYTH & HISTORICAL REALITY. FALL 2008.

FIRST CLASS: 9/8/09

Today’s Class:  Introductions: Staff + Announcements + Map of Course + Course Materials & Requirements + In Memoriam Chris Stefanik  and Sigrid Brauner + In-Class Writing Assignment:  Student Information Forms + Film Clip:  Glinda from Wizard of Oz + Slide Presentation: European vs. Anglo-American Iconography of the Witch + Final Film Clip:  Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz

I.  Introductions: Instructor & TAs

II.  Announcements

Witches in the News:

III.  Course Materials & Requirements:
Course Goals:  Map of Course + Warnings

Syllabus:  also on web site: changes = updated there

Honors Section:  Wednesdays at 12.20 (Herter 546) and 1.25 (Herter 207) if desired. One credit. See me after class if you are interested.

III.  In Memoriam Sigrid Brauner:
“I want to connect you to a terrible but important part of our history.  I want to connect you with the strength and power of those women accused of witchcraft.  I want to connect you to people who were innocently killed.  And I want you to come away with a sense that we must all continue the struggle against the suppression of women and all others who have been treated unjustly.” (end of first lecture in German 190A)

IV.  In-Class Writing Assignment:  Student Information Forms (collect)

V.  Film Clip:  Glinda from Wizard of Oz (good witch/bad witch)

VI.  Slide Presentation: European vs. Anglo-American Iconography of the Witch

A.  The European Iconographic Tradition:
1.  Witches in Antiquity (19th-century representations):

• Pythia at the Oracle of Delphi:  cf. phythonica, pythonissa in Brauner glossary in reader.
• Circe changing men into swine (19th century)           
• Medea by Eugene Delacroix (19th century)

2.  Medieval illustrations:

• Night-traveling:  fresco on Silesian cathedral (ca. 1300)
• Flying witches:  illuminated medieval manuscript (1451)

3.  Ulrich Molitor, De Lamis (1489):  woodcuts

• The Demon Lover
• Witches Raise a Hailstorm
• Witches’ Sabbath

4.  Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528):

• Four Witches (1497) 
• Witch Riding a Goat Backwards (1500-01)

5.  Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545) = student of Dürer

• Preparing for the Witches’ Sabbath (1509)
• Three Witches (1514)
• Two Witches

6.  F.M. Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum (1610):

• Trampling on the Cross
• The Devil’s Kiss
• Dismemberment of a Child

7.  19th & 20th-Century European Witches:

• F. J. de Goya (1746-1828):  Witches’ Sabbath with Horned Devil
• Witch: Tèresa Feodorowna Ries (1896)
• Witches Then and Now:  Jean Veber (1907)
• Walpurgisnacht:  Ernst Herter (1905)

B. The Anglo-American Iconographic Tradition:

• Scotland’s North Berwick Trials 1590-91 (black devil, old women)
• Black John Chastising the Witches (1662, trial of Isobel Gowdie Scot) by George Cruikshank
• Lancashire Witches (1612)
• Salem Familiars
• Tituba and Salem Girls (19th century)
• 19th-century Mother Goose figure as illustration for childrenís fairy tales
• Illustration for Punch: T.H. Townsend (1911)
• Witches’ Coven.  Home for the aged in Norfolk, England:  Library of Congress postcard
• Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz
• Cover for the New Yorker::  Edward Sorel (10/30/1995)

VII. Final Film Clip:  Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz