2026 Theses Master's

Weaponizing The Witch: Cultural Myth, Policy and The Fight For Human Rights

Kahn, Zoe

This thesis examines the figure of the witch as a mutable, cultural construct through which gendered and racialized human rights violations are produced, legitimized, and contested. While the witch has been widely studied within feminist, historical, and literary scholarship as a symbol of patriarchal persecution, human rights discourse has rarely engaged with witchcraft as a mechanism that actively shapes contemporary violence, legal ambiguity, and state neglect. This project addresses that gap by tracing how the witch operates across three distinct yet interconnected contexts: as a persecuted subject in historical Europe and colonial Latin America, as an alleged perpetrator of violence in contemporary witchcraft-related attacks against persons with albinism in Tanzania, and as a reclaimed identity within feminist and Indigenous movements across the Americas.

Drawing on cultural analysis, historical scholarship, human rights law, and policy frameworks, the thesis demonstrates how myths and superstitions surrounding witchcraft continue to enable extreme forms of violence, including femicide, ritual killings, and organ trafficking. Through a focused case study of Tanzania, it examines how legal ambiguity, colonial legacies, and governmental inaction have facilitated systematic attacks against persons with albinism. This has culminated in recent international accountability efforts such as rulings by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In contrast, the project also explores how contemporary feminist movements reclaim the figure of the witch as a form of spiritual, political, and epistemic resistance to patriarchal and colonial violence.

By bringing cultural myth into direct conversation with human rights law, this thesis argues that effective responses to witchcraft-related violence require not only legal reform, but engagement with the cultural logics that render certain lives expendable. By treating the witch as a serious analytic category rather than a metaphor or superstition, this project offers a more critical and culturally grounded framework for addressing witchcraft-related violence and the ongoing denial of humanity faced by women and other marginalized groups.