Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture , livre ebook

In the decades since the Second World War, the teenage witch has emerged as a major American cultural trope. Appearing in films, novels, comics and on television, adolescent witches have long reflected shifting societal attitudes towards the teenage demographic. At the same time, teen witches have also served as a means through which adolescent femininity can be conceptualised, interrogated and reimagined. Drawing on a wide theoretical framework – including the works of Deleuze and Foucault as well as recent new materialist philosophies – this book explores how the adolescent witch has evolved over the course of more than seventy years. Moving from the birth of the bobby soxer in the 1940s through to twenty-first-century teenage engagements with fourth-wave feminism, the author discusses a range of themes including embodiment, agency, identity, violence and sexuality. List of Abbreviations of Frequently Referenced Texts Introduction Chapter 1: Towards a Teratology of the Teenage Witch Chapter 2 ‘Bitch Witches’: Marion Starkey and the Birth of the Post-War Teenage Witch Chapter 3 ‘Leave Something Witchy’: Identity Formation and Perverse Readers in the Long 1960s Chapter 4 Makeover Narratives and Glamourous Transformations: The Postfeminist Teen Witch Chapter 5 ‘How could there not be a choice? Free will?’: Agency and Choice in Teen Witch Texts of the Fourth Wave Index