Solidarity with @propublicaguild.org members on strike today. Don’t cross the digital picket line! 🚫

I think mid-twentieth century anthropological accounts of witchcraft and magic can be read as an attempt to understand how others understood bad luck? (I’m thinking of Evans-Pritchard’s understand of Azande witchcraft as a means of explaining unfortunate events.)

NYU needs a fair contract, not the disruption of a strike! It’s been almost two years since contract faculty at NYU voted for their union, Contract Faculty United - UAW, by an overwhelming margin. Yet for more than 16 months of negotiating, the NYU administra...

NYU contract faculty organized with CFU-UAW are preparing to strike on 3/23 over unmet demands on AI protections, governance, academic freedom, protection for international faculty, & compensation. You can support us by emailing Pres. Mills & the Board of Trustees: actionnetwork.org/letters/nyu-...

Chimpanzees Are Really Into Crystals

I’m devastated that this (very interesting) article isn’t about chimpanzees getting into New Age spirituality. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/s...

This is such a wonderful reminder of why writing (lit reviews, professional documents) matters in the context of AI. I can’t wait to share it with my students.

CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.

Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.

Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!

*to submit an abstract before 21/3

This edited collection looks great! I can’t wait to read it!

Is the house haunted? Podcast Episode · Q & Abe · 01/22/2026 · 37m

I really enjoyed talking with the Q & Abe podcast about ghost seeking and tourism at Lincoln's Cottage, where visitors often wonder if the cottage is haunted. I definitely plan to visit when I'm next in Washington D.C. @lincolnscottage podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

This is such an important reminder at the end of this semester.

I had a great time at the AAAs talking about animal ghosts! I was happy to see how many papers were actually about ghosts and spirits rather than just metaphorical ghosts. 2025 has been a great year for ghost conferences. 👻

I agree that it’s awkward! I think ideas can crystallize around something or into something, but writing/texts are too concrete to sustain the metaphor of crystallization. Coalesce, center, or focus all feel like clearer choices.

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

Logo, two cartoon ghosts read the book "Scientifical Americans".

Please check out the @leasthaunted.bsky.social
Episode 142: Scientifical Americans with Sharon A. Hill

www.leasthaunted.com/podcast/epis...

CFP: A Time of Monsters The monster has been here all along. It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it un...

It’s here! The call for pitches for our deluxe December issue, “A Time of Monsters,” supported by a grant from the Kitchings Family Foundation.

Read our blog to get an overview of the Anthropic settlement. There’s an FAQ for authors, too. We hope you find it helpful.

authorsguild.org/news/what-au...

Congratulations! I just ordered a copy! I’m really looking forward to reading it!

Aah! Thanks for reading it! :) I hope book writing is going well! I can’t wait until it’s out!

After a mere seven years in the making, The Cultural History of Magic is finally here!!

Thanks for sharing this! I would have missed it otherwise! 🙂

I had the best time at the Ghosts in Britain and Ireland 1500-1950 conference. All of the papers were fascinating. The organizers did an amazing job! www.mic.ul.ie/Ghosts-Confe...

We are looking for fun LGBTQA+ folks to collaborate with to celebrate PRIDE MONTH! If you are a creative or an artist and want to come on our podcast to talk about paranormal stuff (keep in mind we are good natured skeptics)- then please hit us up!!
#Pride #LGBTQA+ #LeastHaunted #Podcast

Thanks so much! I’m so looking forward to reading Ghosted! It looks fantastic.

Thank you so much!

Doubting Ghosts: Paranormal Investigation and the Paradoxes of Belief Based on ethnographic research in England, Doubting Ghosts explores the paradoxes faced by paranormal investigators or

My book, Doubting Ghosts, is out today! It's based on research that I started in 2006, so it's been a long time in the making. I'm really happy that it's finally out in the world! www.routledge.com/Doubting-Gho...

Oh wow! I haven’t been to the AAA in ages, but I’m now definitely intrigued!