Occult Science: Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and the Persistence of Wonder
29 January 2027 – Online
Despite enduring narratives that cast modern science as the agent of rationalisation, the relationship between scientific knowledge and the occult has never been a simple story of succession or exclusion. In recent years, scholarly discourse has increasingly challenged this presumed binary, whose classic formulation is often associated with German sociologist Max Weber’s lecture on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ (1917). Works by scholars such as Alex Owen (The Place of Enchantment, 2004), George Levine (Darwin Loves You, 2006), and Christopher Partridge (‘Occulture is ordinary’, 2013) argue against the view that Enlightenment secularisation progressively dispels the world’s ‘magic’, instead emphasising forms of persistent re-enchantment. Within this context, the occult is often understood not as antithetical to science, but as concerned with the invisible forces of the natural world that could be investigated and understood through scientific inquiry. From the entanglement of alchemy, astrology, and mesmerism with the emergence of (early-)modern science to contemporary invocations of the supernatural in digital, technological, and medical discourses, the boundaries between science and the occult have been continually negotiated, redrawn, and contested, nurturing our desire to wonder.
This one-day symposium invites abstracts for twenty-minute papers on enchanting narratives of occult sciences from scholars in literary studies and adjacent fields, including the medical humanities, history, and media studies. We are particularly interested in papers that challenge linear narratives of progress and disenchantment and that explore how scientific knowledge has continuously generated new forms of mystery, wonder, and quasi‑magical thinking.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
- Occult traditions, philosophies, and societies
- Esoteric texts and arcane knowledge
- Illuminating invisible forces
- The commodification of spirituality and the occult
- Enchantment in novels, poetry, (video) games, film, and television
- Algorithms, artificial intelligence, and technological opacity
- Alchemy, astrology, divination, and magic
- Medicine and (quasi-)magical bodily transformation
The symposium will take place online on Friday 29 January 2027. In addition to panel presentations and discussions, the programme will feature one or two keynote lectures (speakers TBC). A selection of papers presented at the conference may be considered for inclusion in a future edited collection.
The symposium is organised by Marijke Valk (University of Birmingham). Please send 250-word abstracts, together with a short biography (c. 50-100 words) to mxv426@student.bham.ac.uk by 31 October 2026. Acceptances will be sent in early November.
We are committed to making the symposium as accessible and inclusive as possible. If you have any access requirements you would like us to be aware of, please feel free to include them with your abstract submission.
