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Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible
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Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible Paperback - 2015

by Richard Baxstrom; Todd Meyers


From the publisher

Benjamin Christensen's Hxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Hxan creatively blends spectacle and argument to provoke a humanist re-evaluation of witchcraft in European history as well as the contemporary treatment of female "hysterics" and the mentally ill. In Realizing the Witch, Baxstrom and Meyers show how Hxan opens a window onto wider debates in the 1920s regarding the relationship of film to scientific evidence, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and concepts in medicine and psychology. Hxan is a film that travels along the winding path of art and science rather than between the narrow division of "documentary" and "fiction." Baxstrom and Meyers reveal how Christensen's attempt to tame the irrationality of "the witch" risked validating the very nonsense that such an effort sought to master and dispel. Hxan is a notorious, genre-bending, excessive cinematic account of the witch in early modern Europe. Realizing the Witch not only illustrates the underrated importance of the film within the canons of classic cinema, it lays bare the relation of the invisible to that which we cannot prove but nevertheless "know" to be there.

Details

  • Title Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible
  • Author Richard Baxstrom; Todd Meyers
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 296
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Fordham University Press, New York
  • Date 2015
  • ISBN 9780823268252 / 082326825X
  • Weight 1.3 lbs (0.59 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 in (23.62 x 15.49 x 2.54 cm)
  • Themes
    • Topical: New Age
  • Library of Congress subjects Witchcraft - Europe - History, Witches - Europe
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2015008857
  • Dewey Decimal Code 133.430

Media reviews

Citations

  • Choice, 08/01/2016, Page 0

About the author


Richard Baxstrom is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Houses in Motion: The Experience of Place and the Problem of Belief in Urban Malaysia. Todd Meyers is Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at Wayne State University. He is the author of The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy and the coeditor of Fordham's Forms of Living series.
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Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible (Forms of Living)

Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible (Forms of Living)

by Meyers, Todd

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Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible

Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible

by Richard Baxstrom

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Paperback / softback. New. Realizing the Witch follows the unfolding of Benjamin Christensen's visual narrative in his 1922 film, Haxan (The Witch). Through a close reading of Haxan, Baxstrom and Meyers examine the study of witchcraft from historical and anthropological perspectives, as well as the intersection of popular culture, artistic expression and scientific ideas.
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Realizing the Witch – Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

Realizing the Witch – Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible

by Baxstrom, Richard/ Meyers, Todd

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Fordham Univ Pr, 2015. Paperback. New. 1st edition. 296 pages. 9.25x6.25x1.00 inches.
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Realizing the Witch : Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible (Forms of Living)

Realizing the Witch : Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible (Forms of Living)

by Richard Baxstrom, Todd Meyers (Benjamin Christensen)

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New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. A New, Unread copy (see scan).. First Edition, First Printing. Paperback. New. Illus. by 64 Black and White Illustrations. 8vo - over 7Ÿ" - 9Ÿ" tall.
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