The co-founder of NAoHH Network Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard Divinity School, CSWR) will discuss her book The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time and Healing in Southern Italy with Susan Greenwood (Independent) and Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths).
Hosted by Ktarzyna Puzon and Veronica Ferreri (NAoHH), the roundtable will have plenty of time for questions and further conversations.
Based on ethnographic research among contemporary Pagan communities in Southern Italy (Salento, Apulia), The Spider Dance… challenges (uni)linear ideas and experiences of time and temporality by showing the interconnectedness of alternative historicities, healing, and place-making among persons engaged in reviving, continuing, or re-creating traditional Pagan practices. The Spider Dance looks at local Pagans and at their ritual practice and interpretation of the traditional dance and music called pizzica. Pizzica is associated with tarantismo, a phenomenon present in that area for hundreds of years and attested until the second half of the XX century. Affecting mostly (but not only) women, tarantismo has been described in the form of malaise and physical suffering thought to be provoked by the bite of tarantula spiders and cured with pizzica music and dance. At the turn of the century tarantismo disappeared and new forms, called neotarantismi, emerged. The book describes a novel “spiritual” form of neotarantismo and highlights its connections with contemporary forms of magic and healing. The relevance of The Spider Dance is not limited to a description of particular Pagan groups and practices. It also makes some key practical and theoretical contributions to the anthropological study of magic, of contemporary religions, of “historicities,” and to scholarly debates around complementary medicine and “well-being,” in Italy and abroad.
Giovanna Parmigiani is an anthropologist of religion and a scholar of Contemporary Paganisms. Her work is firmly grounded in ethnographic and auto-ethnographic practices, and her primary interests are the relationships between religion, politics, and gender. Her first monograph, Feminism, Violence and Representation in Modern Italy: “We Are Witnesses, Not Victims” (Indiana University Press, 2019) dealt with violence against women, and her second, The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy (Equinox Publishing, forthcoming) with contemporary Pagan women and healing. At HDS, Dr. Parmigiani teaches courses on Contemporary Paganisms, Earth-Based Religions, New Age Spiritualities, the Anthropology of Magic, and Religion and Healing.
online, 2 June, 2025