1st
December 2013 will mark a year since I inaugurated the Albion Calling
interview series. Devoted to academics who specialise in the
archaeology, history, and general development of religion and magic,
there have been ten interviews so far, and it has proved itself a
resounding success, being by far the most popular element of my blog.
Throughout this interview series, I have had the opportunity to talk
with a mix of people from all across the academic and scholarly
spectrum, from particularly promising MA and PhD students at the very
start of their careers to those who have retired to the comfortable
position of Professor Emeritus, along the way fitting in a number of
excellent independent scholars who operate free from the constraints
of the academy. The one category that probably has been neglected is
that of established academic lecturers and professors midway through
their careers, who are usually far too busy with the demands of
university life to devote some of their time to interviews such as
this!
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The late Dr. Evans. |
Kicking
off our series was the late, great Dr.
Dave Evans, an independent historian of late 20th-century British
occultism who was the author of a number of important books on the
subject as well being the co-mastermind behind the now sadly defunct
peer-reviewed Journal
for the Academic Study of Magic.
Following on from Dr. Evans was Chas
S. Clifton, Professor Emeritus of Colorado State
University-Pueblo, who is internationally known as one of the
figureheads in the field of Pagan studies, being editor of The
Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies and
the author of one of the definitive studies of contemporary Pagan
history in the United States.
As
January 2013 came around, we had our first archaeologist, the
Australian Caroline
Jane Tully, who is currently a doctoral student at the University
of Melbourne studying Aegean tree cults and who has also published
academically on the subject of the infamous occultist Aleister
Crowley and Pagan reception of academic research. We remained in Australia to interview another scholar who is
sadly no longer with us, Dr.
Nevill Drury, who came to fame as a prominent advocate of
Neo-Shamanism and Indigenous Australian art but who later earned his
academic credentials with his studies of Aussie Witch Rosaleen Norton
and other important publications on contemporary Paganisms and
Western esotericism.
Archaeologist of British folk magic Brian Hoggard. |
The
next subject of the series was the American religious studies scholar
and thealogian Dr.
Christine Hoff Kraemer of Cherry Hill Seminary, in an
interview for which we discussed her work on contemporary Pagan
theologies/thealogies, sexual minorities, and graphic novels. Back in
Britain, I interviewed the independent archaeologist Brian
Hoggard, one of the country's foremost specialists on the
archaeology of folk magic, to discuss his attempts at cataloguing the
evidence for apotropaic items found in British buildings. Later that
month I conducted a dual interview with two then-master's students
based at the University of Amsterdam, Jimmy
Elwing and Aren Roukema, who have recently launched an exciting
open-access peer-reviewed outlet for scholars, Correspondences:
An Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism.
Next
up was the turn of another esteemed American scholar, Dr.
Robert Mathiesen, Professor Emeritus of Brown University and
co-founder of the Societas Magica academic fellowship, who provided
us with a wonderful overview of his life and work in studying
esoteric practices in the nineteenth and twentieth-century United
States as well as his work on Medieval literature. Remaining in the
States, I interviewed independent scholar Michael
G. Lloyd, author of the excellent recent biography of prominent
American Wiccan Eddie Buczynski. Turning then to Norway, it was the
turn of Dr.
Egil Asprem, an Associate Professor at the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology who is a rising star in the academic study
of Western esotericism. Not only is he the co-founder of the
Contemporary Esotericism Research Network, but he has recently
published his first book on the subject of Enochian magic, with
further works coming soon.
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Archaeologist and Pagan studies scholar Caroline J. Tully. |
As
this summary of a year's accomplishments shows, a heavy emphasis has
been on interviewing scholars involved in Pagan studies and the
academic study of Western esotericism. While these subjects do indeed
fascinate me (and, more importantly, fascinate many of my readers),
it is unfortunate that they have drawn so much of the focus, and I
hope that in the coming year I can bring in more archaeologists,
historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and religious studies
scholars whose research focus lies outside of these select areas. In
particular, I really want to bring in more archaeologists of
religion, ritual, and magic, a subject that is close to my heart and
which constituted the basis of my BA and MA dissertations, and which
(I hope) will form the basis of my proposed PhD thesis. It is also
unfortunate that there has been a clear bias towards white males in
the interviewees featured, although I believe that this is down
largely to the general bias within academia itself; despite attempts
to diversify in recent decades, the academy remains, by and large,
the domain of the middle-class heteronormative white male.
But
despite these problems, I think that this series has accomplished
some great things in its first year. For one, it has created a
platform from which academics and independent scholars can get their
ideas and research across to a much wider segment of society. I'm
aware that many of Albion Calling's readers are not academics
themselves, but are still fascinated by the findings of scholarly
research and the process by which it is conducted. I hope therefore
that this blog has helped demolish people's ideas about the "ivory
towers" of academia, and encouraged academic outreach into
communities with whom professional scholars rarely interact. Second,
I believe that this series has allowed for interdisciplinary
discussion and discovery, with archaeologists, historians, and
religious studies scholars all sharing the same electronic platform
to discuss their own work and learn about that being undertaken in
other disciplines. Maybe I'm tooting my own horn a little, but I'm
really proud of this lecture series and I would like to take this
opportunity to once again thank all of those who have taken part in
it. In particular, I think it apt to look back in memoriam at Dr Dave
Evans and Dr Nevill Drury, two wonderful scholars who unfortunately
each passed away several months after giving their informative and
poignant interviews. Here's hoping that the next year will be equally
exciting for this ongoing series.
Great work on getting these great interviews! Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteThank you ! I already have some interviews with a number of pretty interesting scholars lined up for the new year, so watch this space.
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