This article was originally published in UCSB's ' The Current '.
Witchcraft has been feared, mocked and romanticized — but rarely has it been fully understood as a story of feminist resistance and enduring cultural power. Feminist studies scholar Jane Ward has set out to change that narrative. Her latest book — a collaboration with co-author Soma Chaudhuri — introduces “feminist witch studies,” a new interdisciplinary field that explores the power, persecution and political dimensions of witchcraft across cultures.
Ward, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, first engaged with the subject while preparing a course on the history of witches and witchcraft. Known for her work in sexuality and gender studies — including a first-of-its-kind course called Critical Heterosexuality Studies — Ward noticed a clear difference in how scholars from the Global North and Global South wrote about witches. “In the Global North, witch hunts are treated as relics of the past, largely viewed as events limited to the medieval or early modern periods," she said. "But in the Global South, witch accusations and persecutions are still ongoing today.”