Sabina Magliocco, Ph.D. grew up in Italy and the United States. She received an AB from Brown University in 1980 and a Ph.D. from Indiana University – Bloomington in 1988. She has taught at California State University, where she served two terms as department chair, as well as the University of California – Berkeley, the University of California – Santa Barbara, UCLA, and the University of Wisconsin – Madison.  A recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright and Hewlett fellowships, and an honorary Fellow of the American Folklore Society, she has published on religion, folklore, foodways, festival and witchcraft in Europe and the United States, and is a leading authority on the modern Pagan movement. Her current research is on nature and animals in the spiritual imagination.  Prof. Magliocco has appeared as an occasional guest on a number of popular television series about modern legends and beliefs.

Ritual, festival and religion; folklore and expressive culture (narrative and belief, vernacular healing, material culture); magic and witchcraft; modern Pagan religions; narrative; ethnic/regional/national identity issues; gender; cultural studies and critical theory; animal studies; ethnographic methodology and writing.

Books

Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)

Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars: Making Things Whole (University of Mississippi Press, 2001)

The Two Madonnas: the Politics of Festival in a Sardinian Community (Lang, 1993; 2nd Edition, Waveland Press, 2005). Winner, 1994 Chicago Folklore Prize

Films

“Oss Tales” film series (with John Bishop). Media Generation Productions, 2007. Royal Anthropological Film Festival Selection, University of Manchester, 2007.

Other Publications

30+ peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on topics ranging from Italian American foodways to festival revival in Sardinia, historical and modern witchcraft, the nature of belief, the practice of magic, and fairies.

2016 Fellow, Nature, Art and Habitat Writing Residency, Taleggio, Italy

2004      Honorary Fellow, American Folklore Society

2001      National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship

1996      John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship

1994      The Chicago Folklore Prize

1989      Fulbright Post-Doctoral Research Grant, Italy

1985      Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Research Grant, Italy

Sociocultural AnthropologyProfessor, Sociocultural Anthropology

Folklore and expressive culture; ritual, festival and religion; magic and witchcraft; modern Pagan religions; ethnic/regional/national identity; animal studies; ethnographic writing. Mediterranean, Great Britain, North America

Email: sabina.magliocco@ubc.ca