Divya Cherian will discuss the nineteenth-century British colonial effort to put an end to witch persecution in western India, exploring how this campaign coincided with colonial efforts to know and subdue populations that were in these same decades being classed as ‘tribes.’ Yumi Kim will examine the police persecution of female shamans in early-twentieth-century Okinawa, where colonial Japanese officials and local Okinawan elite reformers put the women on trial for inciting social unrest. Emily Baum will consider the Chinese Communist Party’s drive in the 1950s to weed out ‘superstitious’ beliefs in divination and shamanism, focusing particularly on the role that female healers played in mediating sickness and health.

Taken as a whole, the panel will explore the trajectories and consequences of state-led transitions to medical modernity for women and for gender regimes in modern South and East Asia.