MA in Magic and Occult Sciences
Posted by Emily Selove
27 June 2023
We are delighted to announce a new MA in Magic and Occult Sciences
launching in September, 2024.
This is a flexible degree, which provides you the freedom to design you own course of study. Led by a team of faculty members across departments (see our “members” tab), an essential aspect of this programme is its interdisciplinarity. Thus, the University of Exeter’s MA in Magic and Occult Science allows you to explore your specific interest within the long and diverse history of esotericism, witchcraft, ritual magic, occult sciences, divination, and related topics. The compulsory, team-taught core module, ARAM251 Esotericism and the Magical Tradition, lets you meet a range of scholars from different fields, and to form a community with other students on your program. You will also attend the monthly meetings and local field trips of the Centre for Magic and Esotericism. Thus, you will benefit from conversation with a wide range of learners with diverse interests, no matter which modules you have chosen. By housing this program in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, we place the Arabo-Islamic cultural heritage back where it belongs in the centre of these studies and in the history of the “West.” Decolonisation, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism, and anti-racism are at the core of this programme.
Students who wish to employ primarily text-based, historical, or social-science methodologies will enrol on the ARAM027 dissertation module, based in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. Students who wish to employ primarily performative and practice-based methodologies will enrol on the DRAM080 dissertation module, based in the Drama Department.
A sample list of optional module topics includes:
Oral History, Material Culture, The Western Dragon in Literature Lore and Art, Researching Theatre and Performance, The Legend of King Arthur, Palaeography, The Philosophy of Psychedelics, Science Technology and Society, Theorizing the Middle East, The Sovereign the Good and Society in Islamic Thought, Themes in Archaeological Theory and Practice, Writing Women in the Middle Ages, The Book in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, and Gender Society and Culture in Early Modern Europe
Please contact e.selove@exeter.ac.uk for more information and to register your interest!
