On Thursday, October 14, Laurent Ferri, Associate Curator of Rare Books at Cornell will speak at the Book History Colloquium on "Witch-Hunters in Book-shops: How Curators Built the Cornell Witchcraft Collection (1866-2010)."

That Cornell University Library has the best and most accessible Witchcraft Collection in the world is widely acknowledged in the academic community, but the whole story of why and how the collection was built (in the context of scholarship and political activism) still needs to be told in details. Driven by their liberal/rationalist and populist/sentimentalist interpretation of European witchcraft, Cornell’s first President Andrew Dickson White (1866-1885) and librarian George Lincoln Burr (who retired in 1922), purchased the largest ensemble of witchcraft trial records and demonology treaties in one repository. In this talk Ferri will discuss the history, formation, and use of this important collection.

Questions? Email Gerald Cloud.

All BHC sessions will be held in 523 Butler Library, 6:00 – 7:30pm.