Michael Ostling

Michael Ostling is a religious studies scholar focusing on the history, historiography, and representation of witches and witchcraft. His published works include a general history of witchcraft in early modern Poland, an edited volume on Christian understandings of goblins and fairies globally, and work in the history of emotions, the ethnobotany of witchcraft, the demonization of Jews and witches, and the millenarian roots of religious toleration. He also writes on theories of religion, often by way of pop culture studies, with work on Harry Potter (and secularization theory) and the Wizard of Oz (and theories of myth). Ostling's current work is taking him in a new direction: critical pedagogy, with an emphasis on the educational philosophy of the 20th-century Polish dissident Jacek Kuron.