Program Overview (ARCHIVED)

Throughout the course of the institute, participants explored the following themes:

1. How the search for definitive truths about an event like the Salem witch trials can often be elusive. Participants will evaluate the merits of various theories that scholars have developed to explain why the trials occurred. However, they will come to realize, as experts have, that no single theory adequately explains how events in Salem led to approximately 150 individuals in the region being accused of witchcraft, and the execution of 19 convicted witches.

2. How the “meaning” of an event like the Salem witch trials evolves to reflect changing cultural and political agendas and scholarly trends. Examples include the publication of Ann Petry’s novel, Tituba of Salem Village in 1964. Petry, an African American author writing in the midst of the Civil Rights Era, portrays the enslaved woman Tituba as a resourceful, dignified survivor of the hysteria that engulfs Salem, challenging earlier portrayals that almost invariably cast her as the racialized “other” who corrupts the young girls in Salem and is the source of the drama that unfolds in the town. Women’s history and the use of gender as a key category of analysis continues to transform our understanding of the trials. Scholars have shown, for example, that economic factors and gendered notions of sin led to the vast overrepresentation of women among accused and executed witches in Salem and elsewhere.  

3. How race is a crucial element in the Salem Witch trials. Participants will examine the ways in which the racial identity of Tituba – the first to confess (under duress) to practicing witchcraft, and chief scapegoat for the trials – has been variously portrayed by novelists and historians over time from an indigenous Arawak woman to an enslaved Black woman. The seminar will offer participants a window into New England’s hidden past, and a deeper understanding of the origins and history of American racism.

4. How literature and popular culture can distort, embellish, and re-image the past. Several activities will focus on literary portrayals of the trials and/or on Puritanism, including a session led by Dr. Charlotte Gordon on Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose great-great grandfather, John Hathorne, was a judge during the trials. Participants will also explore how The Crucible, found on many high school reading lists, has shaped popular understanding of the trials. In virtual tours of both Salem and Danvers, the group will examine how the Puritan era and the trials are publicly interpreted and memorialized. In Salem especially, participants can see how attractions intended to honor the victims of the trials compete with a host of others that have little or no connection to the events of 1692, and which exploit the trials commercially, complicating and compromising the idea of “heritage tourism.”

5. How digital history/humanities is expanding our knowledge of the Salem witch trials while also helping students develop their digital literacy skills. Digital history, the use of digital media and technologies in the preservation, research, and analysis of history, is more than the latest trend in historiography. Digital tools have made possible the recent confirmation of the execution site of the 19 individuals hanged for witchcraft. Academics have also used new technologies to challenge the theories of a previous generation of historians. Participants will leave the institute with a user-friendly “digital toolkit” to incorporate into their own classrooms.

6. The similarities and differences between the Salem witch trials and 20th century instances of hysteria, fear, and scapegoating. In the final week of the institute, participants will explore how patterns evident during the Salem witch trials – the lack of due process, including the right to counsel, for individuals charged with engaging in witchcraft; the presumption of guilt of the accused; and the pressure to implicate others and “name names,” to save one’s self – emerge later in United States in times of fear, e.g. when Japanese Americans on the West coast were confined in incarceration camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and during the McCarthy era. Moreover, parallels will be drawn between the trials and the “forgotten witch-hunt”—the demonization of members of the LGBTQ community when HIV/AIDs emerged as a deadly disease in the 1980s—and recent hate crimes committed against members of the Asian American Pacific Islander communities resulting from disinformation concerning Covid-19.

2023 Institute Schedule

Institute pre-reading

  • Baker, Emerson W. A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience. Oxford University Press, 2014.

  • Godbeer, Richard. Escaping Salem: The Other Witchhunt of 1692. Oxford University Press, 2004.

  • Godbeer, Richard. The Salem Witch Hunt: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018.

July 10, 2023

Day 1 [Remote]: Introductions, overview, and Salem’s place in the history of witch-hunts

Reading: Intro, Levack, Brian. The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, Second Edition. Longman, 1995.

 Morning: Introductions:  12:00pm - 1:30pm

  • Intros of Project Team, Intro to Canvas site modules

  • Quick Share around the group: Name, Place, Role

  • Breakout Rooms in Pairs: One unique thing about you, your interest in the trials and why, your academic/education journey to this point

  • Main Zoom room: Present your partner to the rest of the group

Break / Lunch: 1:30pm - 2:15pm

Afternoon: 2:15pm - 4:00pm

  • Overview of witch-hunting in history and the place of the Salem witch trials in that history

  • Final Project Overview and Samples / Possibilities

July 11, 2023

Day 2 [Remote]: Perspectives on the Salem witch trials (1692 in Focus)

 Reading:

  • “Introduction: Explaining the Salem Witch Hunt” from Richard Godbeer, The Salem Witch Hunt: A Brief History with Documents, Second Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2017).

  • Baker, Emerson W. A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Morning: 1692: What We Know

Zoom Q&A with Dr. Emerson Baker

Afternoon: Primary Source Activity - Reading challenging documents (Bridget Bishop)

Evening film screening on Zoom: The Crucible (1996) [voluntary]

 

July 12, 2023

Day 3 [Remote]: The World of the Puritans

Reading: selections from William Bradford’s “On Plimoth Plantiation” and Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, including “A Dialogue Between Old and New England”; “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth”; “The Prologue”; “Farewell, dear Babe” ; “The Author to her Book”

Afternoon: Writing responses to poetry

Teaching in Focus: Modeling of Common Core State Standards linking poetry to place, tone, setting, and context among teachers, which can be repeated with their students

 

July 13, 2023

Day 4 [Remote]: Gender and Witch-craft

Reading:

  • Kamensky, Jane. “Female Speech and Other Demons: Witchcraft and Wordcraft in Early New England.” In Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America, edited by Elizabeth Reis, 25-52. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998.

  • Reis, Elizabeth. “Gender and the Meanings of Confession in Early New England.” In Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America, edited by Elizabeth Reis, 53-74. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998.

  • Godbeer, Richard. “‘Your Wife Will Be Your Biggest Accuser’: Reinforcing Codes of Manhood at New England Witch Trials.” Early American Studies 15, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 474-504.

Morning:

Zoom Q&A with Dr. Elizabeth Reis

Discussion of readings and primary source activity (What Makes a Witch? witness depositions and confessions)

Afternoon:

Teaching in Focus: Small group and individual conferences between participants and Dr. Reynolds and 2021 seminar participants, Colleen Remar and Sam Futrell, to discuss their respective teaching roles, aims, needs, and connections between the seminar content and their own students back home; opportunity to write up goals and draft initial project possibilities.

 

July 14, 2023

Day 5 [Remote]: The Salem witch trials and Race

Asynchronous lecture: Salem Witch Museum presentation on Race and witch trials

Reading:

  • Primary source: “Examination of Tituba” in the Richard Godbeer document collection

  • Breslaw, Elaine G. “Tituba’s Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch Hunt.” Ethnohistory 44, no. 3 (1997): 535-556.

  • Hansen, Chadwick. “The Metamorphosis of Tituba, or Why American Intellectuals Can’t Tell an Indian Witch from a Negro.” The New England Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1974): 3-12.

  • Rosenthal, Bernard. “Tituba.” OAH Magazine of History 17, no. 4 (2003): 48-50.

Morning:

Discussion of readings, “telephone” activity, and close reading of Tituba’s confession

Afternoon:

Teaching in Focus: Connecting the current realities of race in America to the context of the Salem Witch Trials: how does history inform contemporary issues?

 

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Participants arrive on campus

Morning: Arrive on campus, check-in with conference services for key to room in the residence hall.

Afternoon: lunch and campus tour

Evening: Group dinner with participants, co-directors, and other institute team members.

 

July 17, 2023

Day 6: Contemporaries’ and Historians’ accounts of the Salem witch trials

Reading:

  • Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World

  • Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World

  • John Hale, A Modest Enquiry

Morning:

Discussion of contemporaries’ accounts and primary source activity: Cotton Mather, Memorable Providences (1689)

Afternoon: Fixing the blame, medical explanations, and new approaches to the Salem crisis

  • Participants give mini-presentations on the most popular/unique theories for why the Salem Witch Trials happened or small groups share of unique readings

 

July 18, 2023

Day 7: Magic and Witchcraft in Colonial New England

Reading:

  • Godbeer, Richard. Escaping Salem: The Other Witchhunt of 1692. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Morning:

Visiting scholar Dr. Richard Godbeer

Afternoon:

Visiting scholar Dr. Ben Ray

4:00pm - 6:00pm : Welcome reception at Endicott College President, Dr. Steven DiSalvo’s on-campus house (Beechwood)

July 19, 2023

Day 8.  “The Salem Village Witchcraft Hysteria.”

Reading:

  • “Rebecca Nurse: A ‘Witch’ and Her Trials,” in John Demos, The Enemy Within: A Short History of Witch-hunting (Penguin Book, 2008)

  • Gagnon, Daniel A. A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, Westholme Publishing, 2021 (excerpts).

Off-campus tour of Danvers, Massachusetts – original location of Salem Village — with Dan Gagnon,

  • Salem Village Parsonage

  • Rebecca Nurse Homestead

  • Salem Village Meeting House

  • Salem trials memorial (Danvers)

 

July 20, 2023

Day 9: Hawthorne and the Legacy of the Puritans

Reading: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”

Morning:

Writing responses to Hawthorne

Afternoon: Discussion: How to use history in the English classroom

Teaching in Focus: Overarching discussion on how to help history become an exploration rather than a regurgitation; critical thinking in the English and History classroom

Evening film screening: Witch City documentary

 

July 21, 2023

Day 10: Visit to Salem and the commercialization of the Salem witch trials

The group will visit:

  • Salem Witch Museum - meeting with Rachel Christ, Director of Education

  • The Witch House, home of witchcraft trial judge Jonathan Corwin

  • The Salem Witch Trials Memorial - meeting with Fara Wolfson, co-chair, Voices Against Injustice

  • Proctor’s Ledge and memorial, confirmed location where 19 convicted witches were hanged – meeting with Dr. Emerson Baker.

Afternoon: Debriefing of visit and discussion of:

  • Hill, Frances. “Salem as Witch City.” In Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory, edited by Dane Morrison and Nancy Lusignan Schultz, 283-296. Northeastern University Press, 2004.

  • Weir, Robert. “Bewitched and Bewildered: Salem Witches, Empty Factories, and Tourist Dollars.” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 50, no. 1/2 (2012): 178-211.

 

July 24, 2023

Day 11.  Boston Visit: Massachusetts State Archives

Visit to Mass State Archives (Boston) to view 1692 documents with visiting scholar Margo Burns.

July 25, 2023

Day 12.  Modern Day Witch-hunts: Pearl Harbor and Japanese Incarceration

Reading:

  • Daniels, Roger. Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. Hill and Wang, 2004 (excerpts).

  • Okubo, Miné. Citizen 13660, University of Washington Press, 2014.

Morning:

Discussion of readings; read and discuss majority and dissenting opinions from Mitsuye Endo vs. United States and Korematsu vs. United States

View: “Japanese Relocation” by U.S. Office of War Information (1943) https://archive.org/details/Japanese1943 

Afternoon:

Primary Source Activity: the photography of Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams

 

July 26, 2023

Day 13:  Modern Day witch-hunts: Red Scares and McCarthyism

Reading:

  • Arthur Miller, “Why I Wrote The Crucible,” The New Yorker (October 21 & 28, 1996).

  • Asynchronous lecture: Dr. Liz Matelski

Morning:

Teaching The Crucible with teacher scholars Sam Futrell and Colleen Remar

Afternoon:

Primary Source Activity - HUAC Transcripts from the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC): Friendlies vs. Unfriendlies

Remote presentation with Ellie Gettinger, Jewish Museum Milwaukee

 Evening film screening: Salt of the Earth or On the Waterfront

 

July 27, 2023

Day 14.  Modern Day witch-hunts: Disease, Fear, and Scapegoating

Asynchronous lecture: Dr. Liz Matelski

Morning: Primary source activity: Visual Culture and HIV/AIDS

Afternoon: Teaching in focus: teaching against bigotry and hatred in the classroom


July 28, 2023

Day 15: Presentations and conclusions

On the final day of the summer institute, participants will have the opportunity to present the preliminary draft of a teaching unit, lesson plan, or research paper that they developed.