Elizabeth Ann Pollard is Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence at San Diego State University, where she has been teaching courses in Roman History, World History, and witchcraft studies since 2002. Her research has investigated women accused of witchcraft in the Roman world as well as the exchange of goods and ideas between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the early centuries of the Common Era. Pollard is currently working on two comics-related projects: an analysis of comics about ancient Rome over the last century and a graphic history exploring the influence of classical understandings of witchcraft on their representations in modern comics. Apart from her work on magic, Pollard is co-author of Worlds Together Worlds Apart Concise, the WTWA Full 6th edition, and the Worlds Together Worlds Apart, Companion Reader (W.W. Norton). She has also published on various pedagogical and digital history topics, including writing about witchcraft on wikipedia, tweeting on the backchannel of the large lecture, and digital humanities approaches to visualizing Roman History.

Fabrizio Conti (PhD, Central European University, 2011) is a lecturer in History at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy, as well as an Arts and Humanities Advisor at the American Academy in Rome. His teaching and research interests span the late antique, medieval, and renaissance periods, with an interdisciplinary approach to cultural and religious developments and special focus on the history of magic and witchcraft. His publications include the monograph Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Brepols, 2015) and the edited volume Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions (Trivent, 2020).

Advances in the History of Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion Books