MOUNT VERNON — Helen Berger, an author and sociology professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, will lecture on “Gender and Self-identity in the Wicca Community” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2l, in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons at Cornell College. Admission is free.
Berger will explore the beliefs and rituals of neo-paganism and witchcraft — generally known to scholars and practitioners as Wicca. Wicca serves as a “social laboratory” in which male and female members question traditional gender roles and seek to develop meaningful alternatives.
Berger is the author of “A Community of Witches: Contemporary Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism in the United States” (1999) and is primary author with Evan Leach and Leigh Shaffer of the yet-to-be-published “Voices From the Pagan Census: A Statistical View of Contemporary Neo-Pagans” as well as several articles on the topic of Wicca.