The Witch: You are Not So Rational
The Witch (2015) is a movie about a family of early English settlers in America who tear each other apart when supposed evidence of a witch starts appearing. It's easy to say this kind of witchcraft superstition is for older, less knowledgable generations, but in my opinion the power of this movie comes from what it can tell us about our own proclivities toward manifesting witchcraft where there previously was just tragedy.
There's a lot I wanted to add in this one but cut for time. Check out the sources below for additional information. Careful though, witch hunts are a serious rabbit hole to go down.
Sources:
Articles:
"The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England"
Elizabeth Reis The Journal of American History
Vol. 82, No. 1 (Jun., 1995)
"Witchcraft and the Status of Women -- The Case of England"
Alan Anderson and Raymond Gordon The British Journal of Sociology
Vol. 29, No. 2 (Jun., 1978)
"New England Witch-Hunting and the Politics of Reason in the Early Republic"
Philip Gould The New England Quarterly
Vol. 68, No. 1 (Mar., 1995)
"Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New England" John Demos The American Historical Review Vol. 75 No. 5 June 1970\
"Confess or Deny? What's a "Witch" to Do?"
Elizabeth Reis OAH Magazine of History
Vol. 17, No. 4, Witchcraft (Jul., 2003
"Case Study: The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch-Hunts Today"
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel...
Books
Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History James A. Morone
Entertaining Satan by John Demos
Satan and Salem: The Witch-hunt Crisis of 1692, Benjamin C. Ray
Before Salem: With Hunting in the Connecticut River Valley, 1647-1663, Richard S. Ross III
A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience, Emerson W. Baker
The Witch, Ronald Hutton
Podcasts:
Conviction, Season 2
Uncover, Season 6