College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• From the ground up
  

  History's Michael Bailey is the founding co-editor of a new magic and witchcraft journal.

  
  An opportunity too good to pass up.
  
  That's how Michael Bailey, assistant professor of history, describes the chance to help start a new journal in his research area from scratch.
  
  Bailey is the founding co-editor of Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. For the past year Bailey has been working on developing the format and other aspects of the new journal.
  
  "The University of Pennsylvania Press decided they wanted to expand their journal program and the area of magic and witchcraft is a fairly popular one," Bailey said.
  
  Prior to coming to Iowa State in the fall of 2004, Bailey completed a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania Humanities Forum.
  
  "I'm assuming that's how they got my name in the first place," he says. "The Press came to me and said we have this idea, are you interested in helping us out?
  
  "It finally got to the point where they need someone to run it. Not knowing any better I said yes."
  
  But not before a brief moment of hesitation. Since he was a junior faculty member, he wanted to make sure he had enough time to devote to the journal as well as to his academic responsibilities at Iowa State. He requested that the University of Pennsylvania Press ask a more senior faculty member to serve as the journal's co-editor.
  
  For the past few months Bailey and co-editor Brian Copenhaver of the University of California-Los Angeles have created an editorial board (which includes Iowa State faculty members John Monroe, history, and Nikki Bado-Fralick, philosophy and religious studies) and started working on the journal's format including soliciting article submissions and lining up book reviewers.
  
  Bailey has spent several months talking to other magic and witchcraft scholars to find out what they want in a journal. He says the response so far has been encouraging.
  
  "I wanted to make this journal as broad as possible and not just a ‘witchcraft only' publication," he said.
  
  Initial plans call for Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft to be published twice in 2006 (the first issue is scheduled for the spring) and then become a quarterly publication after that.
  
  The new journal is unique in that Bailey says there is no other academic journal that covers the subjects of magic, ritual and witchcraft.
  
  "There's no conference, no other journal, which is unusual because magic is a topic of focus in a lot of disciplines," he said. "Hopefully this journal will start something."
  
  Bailey says the journal will include a broad understanding of magic that historians, anthropologists, religious studies scholars and Medieval scholars, among others, research.
  
  Bailey's own research interests focus on Medieval religious and cultural history including the history of magic, witchcraft and superstition and the history of heresy and religious dissent.
  
  He has published two books on the subject - Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy and Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft. He has also just completed the manuscript for a third book, tentatively titled Magic and Superstition in Europe.
  
  "This opportunity came along at a very good time for me," he said. "I have been able to publish several things and I'm currently working on how my particular research on the Middle Ages fits into the larger history of magic. The chance to really try to create a definable field out of these areas was very appealing.
  
  "This was an incredibly rare opportunity," he continued. "Obviously very few scholars get a chance to edit a journal and even fewer have the chance to start a journal from scratch. It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up."

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