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Secrecy Studies: On Concealment, Disclosure and Revelation

Module description

This module addresses three key questions: What is secrecy?  How is secrecy enacted? What are its effects? You will learn to understand secrecy from varied academic perspectives and to critically appreciate the intellectual contributions made by these approaches.  Substantively, the module will address the role of secrecy in magic, religion, occultism, esoterism, and secular entertainment magic, with additional treatment of secrecy in statecraft and warcraft.

Module aims - intentions of the module

Secrecy Studies provides an overview of the functions of secrecy within social, cultural and political life. It will expose you to an issue that is challenging in many ways, and cross-disciplinary by nature.  Beyond the content-related aims, it seeks to increase your confidence in developing independent thinking, expressing that thinking verbally and in written materials, and responding to other people’s thinking within a seminar environment. In doing so, the module will help develop and strengthen your abilities to:

• synthesize and critically assess the relationship between different disciplinary approaches
• apply the insights and findings in varied literatures to the analysis of issues confronting society
• conduct independent analysis

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Critically evaluate different disciplinary and substantive perspectives on secrecy
• 2. Demonstrate a significant understanding of the types of social science research into secrecy

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Show an in-depth understanding of how social scientific approaches can be used to study the control of information
• 4. Present your own arguments in an articulate and comprehensive manner
• 5. Develop conceptually-based argumentation informed by empirical examples

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Present oral arguments in an effective and persuasive manner
• 7. Critically evaluate your own work and those of others
• 8. Demonstrate substantial collaborative skills, e.g. group work, including the presentation and discussion of material in groups

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s content will vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Definitions of Secrecy
• Secrecy and its Counterparts: Transparency, Exposure and Revelations
• Secrecy across Media
• Secrecy, Entertainment and Affect
• Secrecy and Imagination
• Secrecy and the Ineffable
• Ritual and Secrecy
• Cross-cultural Practices of Secrecy

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• B. Bellmen, “The Paradox of Secrecy” Human Studies 4 (1981): 1-24.
• C. Birchall, “Cultural Studies Confidential,” Cultural Studies 21 no. 1 (2007): 5 -- 21, doi: 10.1080/09502380601046881.
• W. Eamon, “Arcana Disclosed: The Advent of Printing, the Books of Secrets Tradition and the Development of Experimental Science in the Sixteenth Century’ Hist Sci. 22, no. 2 (1984): 111—150.
• J. Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005).
• B. Rappert, Performing Deception: Learning, Skill and the Art of Conjuring (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022).
• B. Scheid and M. Teeuwen (eds.) The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion (London: Routledge, 2006).
• M. Taussig, “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic” In Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels, eds, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 272 – 306.
• G. Simmel, “The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies,” American Journal of Sociology 11, no. 4 (1906): 441- 498.
• W. Walters, State Secrecy and Security: Refiguring the Covert Imaginary (London: Routledge, 2021).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• Van Veeren, “Secrecy’s Subjects: Special Operators in the US Shadow War,” European Journal of International Security 4 (2019): 386–414 https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2019.20.
• K. Vermeir, “Openness versus Secrecy? Historical and Historiographical Remarks,” British Journal for the History of Science 45, no. 2 (2012): 165–188. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087412000064

Key words search

Secrecy; Ritual; Magic; Practice; Concealment