Leyla Pavão Chisamore | Queen's University at Kingston (original) (raw)
Articles by Leyla Pavão Chisamore
The Journal of Dracula Studies, 2020
Accusations of witchcraft throughout early modern England were evidence of a popular imagination ... more Accusations of witchcraft throughout early modern England were evidence of a popular imagination which understood sin within frameworks of tainted bodies bound by gender and sexuality. This study examines the increased anxieties and corresponding witch-panics of the English Civil War throughout the early seventeenth century. It is informed by deposition records of 1600-1649 throughout the eastern counties, including Essex, Kent, Suffolk, and Sussex. I argue the gendered body becomes the site of individual and social corruption. Described as teats, the physical marks of “suckling familiars” (Impes) became definitive of English evidentiary practice. Records reveal inspections validated accusations of nighttime copulation with the Devil (sexual) and suckling imps (maternal) with the payment of blood. Drawing from medieval humoral theory, blood and milk are not only one and the same, but more broadly representative of the Witch’s immutable corruption and that of the nurturing Mother. These transgressions occurred predominately in the domestic sphere and were perpetuated therein. The Witch was constructed as a foil to the hegemonic expectations of early modern gender roles and as a tool in policing processes of asserting proper behaviour. I present the early modern woman, designated as producer – of children, of the household, and of the dominant faith – we see inverted in the characterization of the Witch. I am concerned then not only with the gender and body of a witch itself, but further discourses around this body as a signifier of health in the processes of nation-making. Following Joane Nagel: women served as “biological producers of collectivities [and] as reproducers of the [normative] boundaries of ethnic/national groups [and] ideological reproduction”. It is this reproductive capacity in particular which reveals anxieties around the figure of the Witch. Their corruptive bodies were thus conceived as vehicles of magical violence, heresy, and corruption throughout the body politic.
Drafts by Leyla Pavão Chisamore
Often framed as inherently enclosed, the body possesses a distinctly liminal nature. It delineate... more Often framed as inherently enclosed, the body possesses a distinctly liminal nature. It delineates self from another (the individual physical body), community from Other (social or political), and between realms (earthly/heavenly). This study deconstructs the dichotomies foundational to the Byzantine worldview. Situated as a social microcosm and susceptible to demonic intervention, the body elucidates the shifting boundaries and responsive nature of authorities. When deployed in religious or magical practices, it straddled realms and stepped over temporal authority. This intermediary body functioned in three modalities. 'Bodies Which Activate' features a liminality which involved sacred tools accessed by a practitioner. This occurred in learned sorcery, summoning demons, use of apotropaic devices, and veneration of icons. 'Bodies Which Are Activated' examines bodies inherent in liminality, yet which required external activation to induce change. This is found in primary relics (the body and its parts) and secondary relics (such as blood, sweat, clothing). The final category, 'Embodied Duality (Body as Channel)', features bodies which achieved their inherent liminality while living through abject suffering. Considering physical health reflective of the spiritual, ascetics were designated as ‘spiritual athletes.’ With worms in their limbs and creaking bones in death, the condition of Stylites and other ascetics were divinely favoured for imitation of sanctified Christly suffering, becoming embodied icons as channels of divine power. Hagiographical narratives emphasized this visceral liminality in records. All of these categories contributed to Byzantine conceptions of holiness and the role of the body therein. By outlining these practices across social strata and hagiography, it traces how imperial and ecclesiastical authorities responded to external influence and the actions and beliefs of its subjects. As such, this study highlights the formative processes of Byzantine religious imaginary and the delimitation of Orthodoxy.
Thesis Chapters by Leyla Pavão Chisamore
Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations, QSpace and Library and Archives Canada, 2021
This research examines the nexus of witchcraft and early modern healthcare. It draws on witchcraf... more This research examines the nexus of witchcraft and early modern healthcare. It draws on witchcraft studies and history of medicine to frame witchcraft as a public health crisis originating in, and investigated through, misogynistic medical ideologies. This research began primarily as an attempt to answer lingering questions of gender discrepancy in predominance of female executions. By examining the witch-panics of the 1640s through early modern medical discourses, this thesis contributes to understanding the physiological origins of witchcraft. Its findings provide the intersection of medical history and the gendered body as a cohesive framework for the dominant discourses in early modern English witchcraft scholarship. It engages with traditional historiographical narratives of witchcraft largely dominated by socio-economic and gender dynamics of daily life in a tumultuous period of English history. It utilizes sources from medical literature, witchcraft treatises, pamphlet testimony records, statistical data, as well as the diaries and reports of early modern contemporaries. The study demonstrates the witch-panics possessed an emphatically environmental dimension. This consisted of century-long concerns over public health instigated by humanity’s sins: worsening mortality crises, rampant endemic diseases, violent religious conflicts, and crop failures. These disasters implicated human sin at the root of these catastrophes. By interrogating the physiological weaknesses characterizing the female body, this work situates witches as covert carriers of sin and harbingers of illness. This understanding shaped all levels of English witchcraft investigation within notions of public health and disease. Witchcraft is examined vis-à-vis burgeoning English public health discourses, the medicalized misogyny informing the witch-figure in popular European culture, and the investigative and protective roles of the body in East Anglian witch investigations.
The Journal of Dracula Studies, 2020
Accusations of witchcraft throughout early modern England were evidence of a popular imagination ... more Accusations of witchcraft throughout early modern England were evidence of a popular imagination which understood sin within frameworks of tainted bodies bound by gender and sexuality. This study examines the increased anxieties and corresponding witch-panics of the English Civil War throughout the early seventeenth century. It is informed by deposition records of 1600-1649 throughout the eastern counties, including Essex, Kent, Suffolk, and Sussex. I argue the gendered body becomes the site of individual and social corruption. Described as teats, the physical marks of “suckling familiars” (Impes) became definitive of English evidentiary practice. Records reveal inspections validated accusations of nighttime copulation with the Devil (sexual) and suckling imps (maternal) with the payment of blood. Drawing from medieval humoral theory, blood and milk are not only one and the same, but more broadly representative of the Witch’s immutable corruption and that of the nurturing Mother. These transgressions occurred predominately in the domestic sphere and were perpetuated therein. The Witch was constructed as a foil to the hegemonic expectations of early modern gender roles and as a tool in policing processes of asserting proper behaviour. I present the early modern woman, designated as producer – of children, of the household, and of the dominant faith – we see inverted in the characterization of the Witch. I am concerned then not only with the gender and body of a witch itself, but further discourses around this body as a signifier of health in the processes of nation-making. Following Joane Nagel: women served as “biological producers of collectivities [and] as reproducers of the [normative] boundaries of ethnic/national groups [and] ideological reproduction”. It is this reproductive capacity in particular which reveals anxieties around the figure of the Witch. Their corruptive bodies were thus conceived as vehicles of magical violence, heresy, and corruption throughout the body politic.
Often framed as inherently enclosed, the body possesses a distinctly liminal nature. It delineate... more Often framed as inherently enclosed, the body possesses a distinctly liminal nature. It delineates self from another (the individual physical body), community from Other (social or political), and between realms (earthly/heavenly). This study deconstructs the dichotomies foundational to the Byzantine worldview. Situated as a social microcosm and susceptible to demonic intervention, the body elucidates the shifting boundaries and responsive nature of authorities. When deployed in religious or magical practices, it straddled realms and stepped over temporal authority. This intermediary body functioned in three modalities. 'Bodies Which Activate' features a liminality which involved sacred tools accessed by a practitioner. This occurred in learned sorcery, summoning demons, use of apotropaic devices, and veneration of icons. 'Bodies Which Are Activated' examines bodies inherent in liminality, yet which required external activation to induce change. This is found in primary relics (the body and its parts) and secondary relics (such as blood, sweat, clothing). The final category, 'Embodied Duality (Body as Channel)', features bodies which achieved their inherent liminality while living through abject suffering. Considering physical health reflective of the spiritual, ascetics were designated as ‘spiritual athletes.’ With worms in their limbs and creaking bones in death, the condition of Stylites and other ascetics were divinely favoured for imitation of sanctified Christly suffering, becoming embodied icons as channels of divine power. Hagiographical narratives emphasized this visceral liminality in records. All of these categories contributed to Byzantine conceptions of holiness and the role of the body therein. By outlining these practices across social strata and hagiography, it traces how imperial and ecclesiastical authorities responded to external influence and the actions and beliefs of its subjects. As such, this study highlights the formative processes of Byzantine religious imaginary and the delimitation of Orthodoxy.
Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations, QSpace and Library and Archives Canada, 2021
This research examines the nexus of witchcraft and early modern healthcare. It draws on witchcraf... more This research examines the nexus of witchcraft and early modern healthcare. It draws on witchcraft studies and history of medicine to frame witchcraft as a public health crisis originating in, and investigated through, misogynistic medical ideologies. This research began primarily as an attempt to answer lingering questions of gender discrepancy in predominance of female executions. By examining the witch-panics of the 1640s through early modern medical discourses, this thesis contributes to understanding the physiological origins of witchcraft. Its findings provide the intersection of medical history and the gendered body as a cohesive framework for the dominant discourses in early modern English witchcraft scholarship. It engages with traditional historiographical narratives of witchcraft largely dominated by socio-economic and gender dynamics of daily life in a tumultuous period of English history. It utilizes sources from medical literature, witchcraft treatises, pamphlet testimony records, statistical data, as well as the diaries and reports of early modern contemporaries. The study demonstrates the witch-panics possessed an emphatically environmental dimension. This consisted of century-long concerns over public health instigated by humanity’s sins: worsening mortality crises, rampant endemic diseases, violent religious conflicts, and crop failures. These disasters implicated human sin at the root of these catastrophes. By interrogating the physiological weaknesses characterizing the female body, this work situates witches as covert carriers of sin and harbingers of illness. This understanding shaped all levels of English witchcraft investigation within notions of public health and disease. Witchcraft is examined vis-à-vis burgeoning English public health discourses, the medicalized misogyny informing the witch-figure in popular European culture, and the investigative and protective roles of the body in East Anglian witch investigations.