MA in Magic and Occult Sciences

[Carrot Flower King]

Have a link to the relevant page of Exeter's site - https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/courses/arabislamic/magic-occult-science/ - just so folk can actually have a look at entry requirements and course details...

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I have seen PC background stories better than most fantasy novels.

 

[theprestige]

Have a link to the relevant page of Exeter's site - https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/courses/arabislamic/magic-occult-science/ - just so folk can actually have a look at entry requirements and course details...

The entry requirements are English proficiency and a 2:2 Honours degree (which appears to be roughly equivalent to an American Bachelor's degree with a mediocre GPA). The 2:2 also seems to be a minimum standard in the UK, for a warm body capable of gainful employment. (Source.)

 

[Lplus]

Props to the first person to put a Hogwarts sign on the front lawn.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I love how so much woo these is trying to feed on white guilt via some vague (or outright spelled out) "Pfffft. Not believing in unsupported nonsense is just Western thinking and if you don't accept alternative ways of thinking you're close minded."

 

[TragicMonkey]

I love how so much woo these is trying to feed on white guilt via some vague (or outright spelled out) "Pfffft. Not believing in unsupported nonsense is just Western thinking and if you don't accept alternative ways of thinking you're close minded."

Well, it's that and the ingrained assumption that wisdom is exotic and therefore has to come from far away and/or long ago. Even though they're just people, too, and have their own reams of nonsense.

 

[arthwollipot]

That's because you haven't thought it through. Imagine being the professor who has to listen to a student talk about their D&D character for two hours, because it's their master's thesis.

That's not what I got from the title. Looks to me like an examination of a particular archetype and its use in fantasy literature and gaming. Nothing wrong with studying literary archetypes in a literature course, in my opinion. I mean it's an MA, not an MSc., right?

 

[8enotto]

I worked in restaurants with half the waitstaff holding a degree in some art or management skill.
This seems like another option to stay out of the manual labor jobs for a few years after high school.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

The entry requirements are English proficiency and a 2:2 Honours degree (which appears to be roughly equivalent to an American Bachelor's degree with a mediocre GPA). The 2:2 also seems to be a minimum standard in the UK, for a warm body capable of gainful employment. (Source.)

UK degrees...

Honours degrees run (down) from 1st class, to second class, upper divison, i.e. 2 I, to second class, lower division, i.e. 2 II, to third class. Then you have degree without honours.

In my day a 2 II was what you got if you were bright, but spent more time drunk than sober, more time going to see bands than at lectures, turned in the worst dissertation in departmental history, refused to acknowledge the existence of one whole 3rd year course, wrote 3 sentence essays, which did actually answer the ridiculous questions and more...Like I did. In my defence, I did turn in some excellent tutorial essays and a couple of pieces of experimental work which were very good indeed and was the only one who could conduct a crucial bit of analysis on a final year field trip.

In those days you needed a 2 I to get on a Master's or PhD.

 

[SteveAitch]

UK degrees...

Honours degrees run (down) from 1st class, to second class, upper divison, i.e. 2 I, to second class, lower division, i.e. 2 II, to third class. Then you have degree without honours.

Also known as a Geoff (Hurst), an Attilla (the Hun), a Desmond (Tutu) and a Thora (Hird).

 

[Mojo]

In my day a 2 II was what you got if you were bright, but spent more time drunk than sober, more time going to see bands than at lectures, turned in the worst dissertation in departmental history, refused to acknowledge the existence of one whole 3rd year course, wrote 3 sentence essays, which did actually answer the ridiculous questions and more...Like I did.

"A good drinking man's degree", to quote a former tutor.

 

[catsmate]

Sounds quite a bit like they aren't talking much skepticism. Here's a couple of the PhD students' dissertations:

Yes? And?

 

[theprestige]

Yes? And?

And they're consistent with the hypothesis that this is is about trying to give punters a veneer of academic respectability to their magical thinking practices.

Why do you ask?

 

[Mojo]

And they're consistent with the hypothesis that this is is about trying to give punters a veneer of academic respectability to their magical thinking practices.

Why do you ask?

The first appears to be a study of astrology from the late 16th to the end of the 17th century (a period when Galileo, for example, practised it), the second is a study of "Fantasy Fiction and Live Action Role Play". No indication that magic or astrology would be treated as real.

Not so sure about the third one, though.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

"A good drinking man's degree", to quote a former tutor.

There is a vicious rumour that I was actually sober at one point, but that was put about by one of my flatmates in order to provoke me into buying some of his rounds (bloody Yorkshire man! Son of a bank manager...).

 

[TurkeysGhost]

The first appears to be a study of astrology from the late 16th to the end of the 17th century (a period when Galileo, for example, practised it), the second is a study of "Fantasy Fiction and Live Action Role Play". No indication that magic or astrology would be treated as real.

Not so sure about the third one, though.

STEMlords are dunking on silly liberal arts courses, get out of here with your pesky facts and details.

 

[The Atheist]

I love how so much woo these is trying to feed on white guilt via some vague (or outright spelled out) "Pfffft. Not believing in unsupported nonsense is just Western thinking and if you don't accept alternative ways of thinking you're close minded."

It's not even new.

Being in the brainy stream at school in the 1960s was just as abhorrent as it is now. Not that such streams are allowed in the 21st century.

I worked in restaurants with half the waitstaff holding a degree in some art or management skill.
This seems like another option to stay out of the manual labor jobs for a few years after high school.

The old joke isn't just a joke, but reality.

"What did the science grad say to the arts grad?"

"Two large fries with that, please."

I've been recruiting for over 30 years and it's stunning how little use an arts degree is in the workforce. Recruiting itself is one refuge for BA (Psych) and (Pol Sci) grads, with probably half of all recruiters having one or the other.

Pretty good for government jobs, too, but in the real world, they're despised, and rightly so.

 

[arthwollipot]

My similar go-to joke for disparaging arts degrees is this:

The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"

 

[zooterkin]

A guest post about it on Edzard Ernst's blog - https://edzardernst.com/2023/10/the-university-of-exeter-will-offer-a-degree-in-magic

The study of religions and the sociology of the occult are worthy objectives of an academic department, but Emily Selove (an aptronym surely), not only uses hyperbole, but personal predilection to establish that “decolonisation, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism and anti-racism are at the core of this programme.” She ventures even further off piste when declaring “this MA will allow people to re-examine the assumption that the West is the place of rationalism and science, while the rest of the world is a place of magic and superstition.”

Assumptions indeed, which Prof Selove has conjured for herself. Speculative opinion with no evidence whatsoever, and seemingly oblivious of the fact that all reputable Western scholars throughout history have been aware of science’s development in the ‘rest of the world’, albeit slowly. Astronomy, gunpowder, papermaking, the use of zero as a number, Musa al-Khwarizmi’s Al-jabr, every branch of science imaginable. There is no ‘Western science’, just ‘science’. (Latin: scientia, knowledge, understanding.)

 

[dann]

The first appears to be a study of astrology from the late 16th to the end of the 17th century (a period when Galileo, for example, practised it), the second is a study of "Fantasy Fiction and Live Action Role Play". No indication that magic or astrology would be treated as real.

Not so sure about the third one, though.

The third one:

Sarah Scaife: (The South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership AHRC funded PhD Researcher):
Research Project: Medicines of uncertainty: in a more-than-human world, how might polyvocal, practice-based performance methods reveal novel ways to articulate and attend to spells of illness?

If rational, it could be a study of the placebo effect of treatments based on magical thinking.
Definition from Law Insider: "Spell of illness means the total duration of all successive CONFINEMENTS that are separated from each other by less than 60 days."
Does a sugar pill work better if accompanied by incantations? Do incantations shorten spells of illness?
But the use of "in a more-than-human world" instead of in a fantasy world makes me think that it is probably not rational.