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Looking for Unicorn Horns

February 16, 2012, 5:00 pm

By PageView Editor

The preternatural is the subject of a new journal from Penn State University Press.

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies in the Preternatural is set to debut in May says editor Kirsten C. Uszkalo, a literary scholar at the Universities of Alberta and Athabasca. The biannual’s book-review editor is Richard Raiswell, a historian at the University of Prince Edward Island.

They welcome original scholarship on any subject related to the “role, appearance of, or function of the preternatural” from any academic discipline and theoretical approach. The realm includes such closely related topics as magic, esotericism, demonology, and the occult.

In articles in the first issue, Nancy Caciola and Moshe Sluhovsky write on parallels between the medieval and early modern practice of “discerning spirits” and an emerging experiential science. Michael Ryan’s essay describes a quest for unicorn horn and saints’ relics by sibling count-kings of late-medieval Aragon. In “Motive Hunting in the Case of Richard Hathaway,” Laura Apps considers the competing narratives behind a 1701 case alleging fraud for a false accusation of witchcraft.

Finally, Joseph Laycock finds similarities between accounts of demonic sexual congress in the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe and accounts of sexual trauma in tales of Satanic ritual abuse told to modern therapists, as well as in stories of alien abduction recalled under hypnosis. Or as he puts it, sexual transgressions “at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious probing of aliens.”

Looking forward, Preternature has a call for papers for an upcoming special issue on Monstrophy. We were happy to learn that there’s a term for ill-placed punctuation.

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  • minnesotan

    Has the word “critical” completely lost its meaning? 

  • darccity

    Please, please, please put an end to the NCAA. There is absolutely nothing worth saving. How it makes rules or enforces them is like analyzing the old Soviet Politburo or the IOC during Avery Brundage’s era. An embarrassment to higher education here and globally.

  • frankmhowell

    I agree, in part, to darccity’s comment the NCAA. However, I think that any new organization would inevitably become no better. My suggestion is to make the NCAA what it is: a profit-making BUSINESS! If Congress and the IRS would remove the tax-exempt status of the NCAA, each conference, and each Division I athletic booster club, many problems would fade quickly. Athletes in varsity sports would become student workers. The AD becomes CEO. Each coach becomes a division manager, and the ‘profits’ go back into the business to cover loss-centers.
    I’m unsure how this would relate to Title IX since it would be a for-profit entity, separate from the university.
    It’s clear that Presidents cannot clear up this mess—it’s way over their pay grade—since the root of the problem lies at the feet of us alumni and fans. As Pogo once said: we’ve met the enemy and he is us!
    When does football season start?

  • benchgroup

    And this weakening of enforcement occurred during the NCAA leadership of the sainted Myles Brand, praised for his supposedly ethical and tough approach to athletics. Could his former boss, Bobby Knight, have been any more lenient?

  • jeffgray

    Shocked by this revelation. And people wonder why the NCAA has image issues. Their recently announced plan to spend more on image enhancing public relations efforts may not be the answer.

  • academic58

    NCAA rules certainly do not work, not even in Division III.  At the college where I served in New York, my team and I discovered that for nearly fifteen years, the Board had flagrantly violated NCAA regulations regarding scholarships to student athletes. The Athletics Director recruited students from Sweden, Norway, and Canada to play ice hockey. Almost all had high estimated family contributions and some even had first degrees from their home country. The VP for Admissions, the VP for Student Affairs, and the VP for Finance were all involved in this flagrant disregard of rules and felt that the rules were unfair anyway. The Athletics Director felt further that the College should fudge the Estimated Family Contribution number in order to convey the appearance of compliance. The Ice Hockey Team came in at discount rates above 100, and most of these students did not even pay full room and board.  Other student athletes, in basketball, for example, had no such advantage and carried heacy loans. Of course, the majority of the latter came from less privileged backgrounds in the US.  NCAA rules should either be enforced or abandoned.  But they also need to be simplified and clarified.

  • eulerian_ta

    Correction:  The NCAA is becoming more lax with punishing big-money athletic programs.  I can find many examples of mid-major Division I schools in that time period that have gotten postseason bans and damaging scholarship reductions for violations that make the violations at the big money schools look like simple mischief.  It makes no sense to give out TV bans to these schools because they hardly ever play on TV.

    It’s not that there aren’t enough rules or that they aren’t being enforced strictly enough.  It’s the the rules are not enforced equitably.

  • cwinton

    Follow the money.  The NCAA is funded from rights fees and championships, and so has a vested interest in seeing its member institutions, especially the big ones, being positioned so that they produce a lot of revenue.  The inherent conflict of interest to protect its income stream is undoubtedly a major factor in the NCAA’s increasingly lax enforcement of its own rules.  Since the NCAA is unlikely to go away, perhaps an independent enforcement agency can be set up that has no financial stake in the outcome of an enforcement action.  The trick would be determining how best to set up and fund such an agency so that it could operate in a truly independent manner.

  • jbarman

    cwinton is correct. Placing bans on the money-making majors in football or basketball would diminish interest and cash from signature events like bowl games and March madness. For that reason, these schools are typically given a bye when transgressions occur.

    Remember Mike Tyson? Here was an individual with so many demons, transgressions, and violations that he should have been denied a license to fight anywhere in the US (he was, in fact, jailed on rape charges). Had he not been such a notable figure of interest and such a money-maker for fight promoters, agents, and TV contracts, he would have received entirely different treatment.

  • show_me_the_money

    Not sure exactly what you’re comparing.  There are also plenty of “big-money” programs that have some pretty outlandish violations.  These violations result in the same loss of scholarships and post season bans just like a mid-major school.  In many instances a “big-money” school will receive a harsher penalty, because the NCAA wants to make an “example” out of them.  So… I don’t necessarily agree with your assessment.  I’m the opposite of you, if the NCAA was serious about enforcing the rules they would quit handing out “slaps on the wrist” and enforce the strictest penalties, even for the most minor violations. 

  • tholder

    I am just not surprised by anything involving the NCAA. This is an organization that does nothing for students, because it was not formed to benefit students.  Yet allows, nay encourages, the use and abuse of students by it’s members. A pox on the house that is NCAA.

  • kgodwin

    Generalizing the findings from a study on a single sport with key differences from most sports (namely the fact that it functions as the minor league for the NBA) is unwise and unethical, in my opinion.

  • 4206dinty

    Frankmhowel:: Good idea

  • manoflamancha

    It always comes down to: “But who will guard the guards?” 

  • foresight

    Subsidies to athletic departments are $3 billion a year. At some schools up to 15% of tuition is allocated to support the athletic departments. Student debt approaching or surpassing $1 trillion. At one school I analyzed over 20% of student debt is directly tied to subsidizing athletics, therefore the students will be paying monthly over $100 monthly for the life of the loan, usually 10 to 15 years, for athletic department expenditures while they were getting an education. The NCAA is totally oblivious and misdirected as to the real issues of athletics and higher education.

  • cwm4c

    “If Wesleyan University’s need-based aid has done its job, a good number of admitted students have been pleasantly surprised to find they can afford to come to an institution that costs more than $60,000.  Hearing from such students and their families is always enjoyable for John Gudvangen, the university’s aid director, and his staff. After all, these are people who give out money for a living. They like it when the people who receive it are pleased and grateful.”

    What a crock!  $60k for Wesleyan?  Top-tier Universities don’t cost that much, nor do high quality R1s.  These people do not “Give out money for a living,” rather in most cases they give out accumulating Debt for a living — big difference.  And they like it when people are “pleased and grateful?”  Of course they do, because they can feel better about themselves when they know they might be giving someone up to $240k of debt upon graduation.

    Wow, just Wow!

  • 11223140

    “Wow” to you as well.  Having worked in the same private college financial aid trenches as Mr. Gudvangen for over 20 years, and then reading your flaming reply, I can only shake my head at such a comment.  I have no horse in Wesleyan’s race, but in fact they do have an excellent need-based aid policy and resources, and they do give out lots of free money (not just loans) to lots of deserving students on a thorough needs analysis basis.  Feel free to complain about college costs — everyone does, and surely you do not want to be left out — but don’t walk away with the mistaken impression that selective liberal arts school push nothing but debt out the door at students.  Unless you have worked in that environment, you may not realize that for large numbers of needy families, they can attend a place like Wesleyan and leave with less debt — in many cases a lot less — than if the student instead opted to attend a much less expensive 4 year state university.  Sure, high income parents who do not even apply for need-based aid can find a way to saddle a private college student with over $200,000 in optional educational debt, but please don’t confuse that choice with the day to day realtities of aid processing at a place like Wesleyan.

    jimeddy

  • sfsg17

    As a parent who was totally screwed over by Wesleyan’s financial aid office and Mr. Gudvangen I find the high-sounding words hard to take. With our FAFSA family contribution calculated at $26,000 Mr. Gudvangen calculates we do not qualify for any financial aid. Zero! He does this by ignoring the fact that as expat residents of China we have no pension savings or even social security (none of which are available to expat workers here), but instead have our retirement in other assets, which he considers 100% available. So we can either 1) tell our son he cannot go to the school he really wants to, and we agree looks great for him, or 2) give half our retirement assets to Wesleyan and retire at age 80 to public assistance and dogfood. No other school’s financial aid department has been so unreasonable.

    By refusing to consider anything outside the template of the standard family of the US Mr. Gudvangen makes a mockery of Wesleyan’s claims to diversity and affordability. Essentially, the acceptance by Admissions was overruled by the rejection by Financial Aid. It would have been kinder to our son to reject him in the first place.

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