Institute for Research in the Humanities

Karen Britland

Position title: UW–Madison open-topic senior fellow (2024-2028)

Address:
Halls-Bascom Professor, Religious Studies Program, UW–Madison

image of a woman with grey hair in a black coat standing by a frozen lake in Wisconsin.

Possession: A Story of Gods, Goods, and Greed

This proposed book project, “Possession: A Story of Gods, Goods, and Greed,” investigates the intersection between “possession” as the ownership of property and “possession” as an inhabitation by the demonic or divine. The book will consider the years 1642-60 (the time of the English civil wars and their aftermath), investigating how tales of spirit possession functioned as a foil for conceptions of the rational, property-owning subject and citizen. That is, the concept of “possession” allows us to plot changes in notions of property rights and the ownership of the self and others at a significant moment of English colonial expansion.

Karen Britland is Halls-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her most recent book (forthcoming with OUP) is concerned with women’s writing during the English civil wars. She is also editing Richard II for the Arden 4 Shakespeare series.