Magic (eBook, ePUB)

A Companion

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

What is Magic?

Magic has been present throughout human cultures in history, proving equally constant and mutable. Defined as supernatural powers, an explanatory belief system or a form of entertainment, magic persists to this day in new kinds of magical thinking in our highly technical, digitized environment.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, magic has enjoyed a growing visibility in popular culture and scholarship. Contributing to this field, this volume illuminates the multi-faceted topic from a variety of perspectives. The chapters collected here investigate diverse aspects and shapes of magic to uncover its manifold material and immaterial appearances in past and present cultures. While offering a broad overview, this book also provides close readings and in-depth analyses of specialist examples, including magical talismans and amulets, magic of the stage and screen (e.g. Black Panther, Shape of Water), historical magicians and their representations (e.g. Harry Houdini) and contemporary queer and feminist witchcraft (e.g. #MagicResistance).

By tracing magic's strong interrelation with colonial discourses, politics, the economy and the arts, magic's role is shown to go well beyond its traditional definition. Magic can be a political act, a means of empowerment and protest, an economic metaphor, and an instrument of oppression and liberation alike. This broad spectrum of magic discourses and their permeation into different aspects of cultures in history, present day and fiction is analysed by the more than thirty contributors to this volume in short, accessible essays.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, D ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Juni 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781800793279
• Artikelnr.: 68417175

Autorenporträt

Katharina Rein holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Culture from Humboldt University of Berlin. Her PhD thesis, on the media and cultural history of stage magic in the late nineteenth century, won the Anniversary Prize for Young Researchers at the Buechner Publishing House and was published in 2020. Currently a lecturer in the Arts and Media Department of the University of Potsdam, she previously worked at the International Research Institute for Cultural Techniques and Media Philosophy (IKKM) and in the Department of Media Studies at Bauhaus University Weimar. She was also a member of the international, interdisciplinary research project Les Arts Trompeurs. Machines, Magie, Médias (Paris, 2015¿18). She is the author of three monographs and of numerous academic essays that have appeared in four languages.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents: Magic Beliefs in History and Today - Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie: Demon Amulets and Christian Crosses - Magic in Byzantium - Thibaut Rioult: Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) - Renaissance Magic - Leo Ruickbie: Lucky Charms in the First World War - Industrialized Magic - Murray Leeder: Unseen Forces (1920) - Spiritualism in American Cinema - Magic across Cultures - Enrique Ajuria Ibarra: Veneno para las hadas (Poison for Fairies, 1984) - Magic in Mexican Cinema - Katarzyna Ancuta: Representations of Magic in Thai Cinema - Khmer Magic - Álvaro Martín Sanz: The Beauty and the Beast in The Shape of Water (2017) - Magical Realism - Josephine Diecke and Noemi Daugaard: The Colour Purple as a Signifier of Shamanism in Black Panther (2018) - Magic in Afrofuturism - Stage Magic in Its Golden Age - Beatrice Ashton-Lelliott: The Magician Autobiography - Magic Lives - Christopher Pittard: The Bullet Catch - Magic at War - Katharina Rein: Women in Stage Magic around 1900 - Female Conjuring - Frédéric Tabet and Pierre Taillefer: «The Suspension Ethéréenne» under the Photographer's Lens - Magic Tricks Photographed - Magic Crossing Media Boundaries - Frank Kessler: The Féerie - Magic between Stage and Screen - Matthew Solomon: Georges Méliès' Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin (1896) - The Materiality of Film Magic - Jamy Ian Swiss: Conjuring on the Small Screen - Broadcasting Magic - Roswitha Schuller: «My Friend the Witch Doctor» (1958) - Magic as a Pop-Cultural Trope - Michael Wedel: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. I (2010) - Magic and the Blockbuster - Sarah Faber: The Dragon Age Series (2009-2014) - Videogame Magic - Magic and the Body - Hannah Segrave: Salvator Rosa's La Strega (1647-1650) - The Witch's Body - Anna Grebe: Disability in Magic Performances - Magic and Disability - Jasmin Kathöfer and Jens Schröter: Disney Films - Magic and Labour - Stephanie Weber: Ray Bradbury's «The Illustrated Man» (1950) - Magical Tattoos - Dunja Haufe: Charles Foster's Being a Beast (2016) - Shamanism and Shapeshifting - Magic and Resistance - Marie Barras: J. W. Waterhouse's The Magic Circle (1886) - The Sorceress and Victorian Gender Roles - Jessica Gossling: Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams (1907) - Magic and Decadence - Hayes Hampton: Coil's LP Scatology (1984) as a Queer Grimoire - Magic against Homophobia - Luce deLire: Queer Feminist Witchcraft and Embodied Reason - Magic and Queer Feminism - Daniela Lazoroska: #MagicResistance: Witchcraft on Social Media as Political Activism - Magic against Trump.