MMW

My favorite reading would probably be Week 4’s Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum. The reason it was my favorite is because it’s a mix of different concepts that I enjoy reading about. There’s social matters, religion, narrative storytelling, and it comes almost in a fantasy form. It didn’t give me a new perspective, but rather gave me a deeper understanding about how religions and texts are capable of depicting protected groups a certain way. Specifically how it isn’t always clear, but any form of illustration or representation is dangerous when not done first-hand. I found this topic relevant because religion is such a sensitive topic when arguing about social matters, but there are individuals who don’t see the damage and pick and choose what they want to voice out, so this text really just emphasized that more. Plus it really is just an interesting text that mentions witches, demons, and temptresses that I enjoy reading about. What the reading taught me about history is to take every record and “historical” fact with a grain of salt because you never fully know the reasoning or motivation behind them. Some can depict groups of people as bad guys, but in reality, it could just be the author’s bias, and since the past already happened, there’s no clear definitive way to fully understand what happened. All in all, being curious, interpreting things your own way, and being careful about trusting what you read, are the biggest things I learned from this text.