Movements promoting occult, magical, and esoteric ideas have been typically excluded from narratives of Western history as irrelevant remnants of a disappearing “enchanted” past. This course considers movements, organizations, and practices such as Freemasonry, Spiritualism, Neopaganism, Alternative Health or Wellbeing, and the New Age which have attracted, and continue to attract, significant numbers of adherents and have had major impacts upon western cultural, intellectual, artistic, and literary traditions. It uses these to explore the social theories of secularization and disenchantment as well as the ways in which Western colonial identities and conceptions of modernity have been constructed upon them. Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hoursPrerequisite(s): 6 credit units of senior-level HIST of which 3 credit units must Note(s): Students with credit for HIST 498.3 Magic and Occultism in the Modern West may not take this course for credit.
Movements promoting occult, magical, and esoteric ideas have been typically excluded from narratives of Western history as irrelevant remnants of a disappearing “enchanted” past. This course considers movements, organizations, and practices such as Freemasonry, Spiritualism, Neopaganism, Alternative Health or Wellbeing, and the New Age which have attracted, and continue to attract, significant numbers of adherents and have had major impacts upon western cultural, intellectual, artistic, and literary traditions. It uses these to explore the social theories of secularization and disenchantment as well as the ways in which Western colonial identities and conceptions of modernity have been constructed upon them. Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hoursPrerequisite(s): 6 credit units of senior-level HIST of which 3 credit units must Note(s): Students with credit for HIST 498.3 Magic and Occultism in the Modern West may not take this course for credit.
