Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Mondays, November 16 - December 7 2026
7:00pm - 8:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$140 Paid Patreon Members / $155 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
“Black Magic” is probably not what you think it is. Is it Black? Is it Magic?
This course—taught by Yvonne Chireau, religious studies professor and consultant on Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners—will trace African American Hoodoo from its rise into the current day through a cultural history that spans the African context and U.S. enslavement, viewing the synthesis of African, European and indigenous native American cultures in the early period.
Our approach will be comparative. Interacting with characters and themes from real histories, we will explore Hoodoo through ancestral storytelling. The course will culminate with a journey through the past by way of the present, as you recover the Conjurers, witches, spirit workers and Hoodoos that may be hidden within your own lineages of family and community through fabulation and imaginal journaling.
We begin with a short history of the Hoodoo Woman in film and literature. Topics include: worldviews of Hoodoo; healing and harming practices; recipes and grimoires of Conjure; Nature and spirits; the commodification of African American traditions; Race and the closed system; the materiality of African American magic, its artistic and visual elements; supernatural beliefs and Christianity.
Sessions will include time for reflection and vibrant discussions of materials, weekly readings and reference texts, available online.
Yvonne Chireau, Ph.D. is the Peggy Chan Professor Emeritus of Black Studies and Religion at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003) and co-editor of Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism (1999). Her recent work focuses on intersections between religion and magic, Africana spirituality and Voodoo memes, at The Academic Hoodoo. Her forthcoming book, Graphic Voodoo, Comic, and the Imaging of Black Religion looks at Africana religions and comics media in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with her beloved family and a three-legged cat named Gimp.
Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Mondays, November 16 - December 7 2026
7:00pm - 8:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$140 Paid Patreon Members / $155 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
“Black Magic” is probably not what you think it is. Is it Black? Is it Magic?
This course—taught by Yvonne Chireau, religious studies professor and consultant on Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners—will trace African American Hoodoo from its rise into the current day through a cultural history that spans the African context and U.S. enslavement, viewing the synthesis of African, European and indigenous native American cultures in the early period.
Our approach will be comparative. Interacting with characters and themes from real histories, we will explore Hoodoo through ancestral storytelling. The course will culminate with a journey through the past by way of the present, as you recover the Conjurers, witches, spirit workers and Hoodoos that may be hidden within your own lineages of family and community through fabulation and imaginal journaling.
We begin with a short history of the Hoodoo Woman in film and literature. Topics include: worldviews of Hoodoo; healing and harming practices; recipes and grimoires of Conjure; Nature and spirits; the commodification of African American traditions; Race and the closed system; the materiality of African American magic, its artistic and visual elements; supernatural beliefs and Christianity.
Sessions will include time for reflection and vibrant discussions of materials, weekly readings and reference texts, available online.
Yvonne Chireau, Ph.D. is the Peggy Chan Professor Emeritus of Black Studies and Religion at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003) and co-editor of Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism (1999). Her recent work focuses on intersections between religion and magic, Africana spirituality and Voodoo memes, at The Academic Hoodoo. Her forthcoming book, Graphic Voodoo, Comic, and the Imaging of Black Religion looks at Africana religions and comics media in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. She lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with her beloved family and a three-legged cat named Gimp.
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