Connections 332 Fall 2014
Connections 332
Witchcraft in Colonial New England
TTh 11:00 to 12:20, Wyatt 313
Fall 2014
William Breitenbach Office: Wyatt 141
Office phone: 879-3167 Office hours:
E-mail: MWF 12:30 – 1:30
Web: www.pugetsound.edu/faculty-sites/bill-breitenbach TTh 1:00 – 2:00
Catalogue description
This course will study witchcraft in colonial New England from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, drawing upon several of the best recent scholarly attempts to explain witchcraft and witch hunts. Students will examine religious, political, sociological, anthropological, psychological, medical, legal, feminist, and cinematic interpretations of witchcraft. In addition to evaluating these disciplinary approaches, students will analyze primary sources from selected witchcraft cases and use various methodologies to develop their own interpretations of those cases. This course satisfies the Connections core requirement.
Syllabus introduction
When I was in graduate school, I was a teaching assistant in the colonial American history course taught by the historian Edmund S. Morgan. In that course, Morgan distributed a 15-page bibliography on topics in early American history. For the section on New England witchcraft, Morgan wrote, “This is probably the least instructive topic through which to approach Puritanism.” A decade later, when his own student, Carol F. Karlsen, published her path-breaking book on women and witchcraft, Morgan ruefully admitted that he had been wrong. During the past forty years, books and articles about witchcraft have revealed a great deal about New England and Puritanism. Indeed, virtually every major historiographical trend in early American studies has been displayed in recent work on witchcraft. In many cases, scholarship on witchcraft has driven these historiographical developments. There have been community studies, gender studies, anthropological studies, and psychological studies of witchcraft. There have been studies of witchcraft in relation to Puritan religion, popular culture, and folk traditions. There have been political histories, legal histories, medical histories, environmental histories, and semiotic analyses of witchcraft. There have been studies of New England witchcraft focusing on race and ethnicity. Nor is this scholarly outburst showing any signs of abating. The last twenty years have seen the publication of at least a dozen major works on witchcraft, not to mention an unending stream of non-scholarly books aimed at a popular audience. In this course, you will have the opportunity to sample some of the best, most interesting, and most influential studies published during the past forty years. Along the way, you will join the scholarly conversation by writing your own multi-disciplinary interpretations of witchcraft cases.
Learning objectives
· To gain a general knowledge of 17th-century New England history and the significance of witchcraft and witch hunts in that history.
· To develop a more sophisticated historical sense by investigating in a scholarly way a topic that is often treated today in an unhistorical and caricatured manner.
· To develop an “understanding of the interrelationship of fields of knowledge by exploring connections and contrasts between various disciplines with respect to disciplinary methodology and [the] subject matter” of witchcraft (Connections core learning objectives).
· To trace the unfolding scholarly debate on a well-defined subject and to begin to appreciate how the shifts in such a debate often involve the adoption of new methodologies by scholars.
· To gain practical experience in evaluating and employing diverse disciplinary methodologies as ways to investigate and interpret a set of primary sources taken from a witchcraft case.
· To improve skills in reading, analyzing, discussing, and writing about challenging primary and secondary sources.
Books (for sale at the Bookstore; copies are also available at Collins Library)
Elaine G. Breslaw, ed., Witches of the Atlantic World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook (NYU Press, 2000). This anthology contains both original source documents from witchcraft cases and excerpts from significant modern secondary interpretations drawn from a variety of academic disciplines.
David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Harvard, 1990; orig. pub. 1989). This cultural history of early New England focuses not on the Puritans’ theology but on their lived religious experiences. It will help us comprehend the world of wonders in which witchcraft beliefs flourished and help us see the competition and cooperation of laity and clergy in interpreting those wonders.
Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (George Braziller, 1969). One of the first books to challenge the popular tradition that the Salem witchcraft crisis was a case of mass hysteria whipped up by fanatical Puritan ministers and attention-seeking, shamming girls, this book also argues more controversially that there actually were practicing witches in seventeenth-century New England.
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Harvard, 1974). This community study is one of the most influential books published in the last 40 years on the Salem Village crisis. Its use of sociological methodology (and some use of psychology) placed witch-hunting in the context of the social history of the small community of Salem Village. In so doing, it broke decisively with earlier sensationalistic popular treatments of Salem witchcraft.
John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England, updated ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004; orig. pub. 1982). In this study of non-Salem witchcraft cases, Demos deliberately and explicitly tries out four social science methodologies in order to explain accused witches, those who accused them, and the communities in which both lived. Each of the book’s four units contains two chapter-length case studies of specific witchcraft episodes and a concluding theoretical chapter about the social science methodology employed in that unit.
Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England, rev. ed. (Norton, 1998; orig. pub. 1987). This book takes a feminist approach and employs an interdisciplinary gender-studies methodology to reveal how witch-hunts were related to the structuring of gender relations in New England. In an “Afterword,” Karlsen discusses her methodological assumptions and goals.
Moodle Website
Readings in the syllabus listed as Moodle are online at the Moodle website for Connections 332. You can login to Moodle at https://moodle.pugetsound.edu/moodle/login/index.php. I’ll also place on Moodle the syllabus, paper assignments, recommended readings, and links to websites.
Other Websites and Library Books. These will be useful for your papers.
Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. Benjamin C. Ray, project director. http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/. This website contains a wealth of documents about the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692, including trial transcripts, contemporary pamphlets, government records, maps, and links to archival materials.
Famous American Trials: Salem Witchcraft 1692. Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm. This link will take you to the website for the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, where you’ll find primary source documents, secondary sources, a bibliography, and simulations and games.
A Guide to the On-Line Primary Sources of the Salem Witch Trials. M. Burns, compiler. http://www.17thc.us/primarysources/. This is a portal to websites with primary sources.
David D. Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638-1693 (Collins Library call number BF1575 W62).
Bernard Rosenthal, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (KFM2478.8 W5 R43).
Richard Godbeer, ed., The Salem Witch Hunt: A Brief History with Documents (my copy).
Brian P. Levack, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (BF1571 O94 2013 ).
William E. Burns, Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia (Collins call number
Ref BF1584 E9 B87 2003; this book is shelved in the Reference Stacks).
PROCEDURES, REQUIREMENTS, EXPECTATIONS
Class participation
This will be a discussion class. That means everyone needs to show up on time, with the reading assignment completed and ideas to talk about. Always bring the day’s assigned readings so you can refer to particular passages during discussion. In class it’s your job to put your ideas out there for classmates to endorse, challenge, and transform. Give others the benefit of your disciplinary expertise. Be willing to ask questions, confess confusion, take a stand, and change your mind when presented with better evidence and reasoning. Listen attentively and respond respectfully to what your classmates have to say. Speaking directly to them (rather than through me) shows that you take them and their ideas seriously. Staring raptly at an electronic device during class without typing notes or looking up at speakers shows that you don’t.
Your regular attendance and informed participation will be important in determining both the success of the course and the grade you get in it. After every class, I’ll evaluate your contribution to other students’ learning. Students who make outstanding contributions will get a 4, those who contribute significantly will get a 3, those who attend and listen but say little will get a 2, those whose behavior makes it harder for themselves or others to learn (e.g., by arriving late, texting, erecting a laptop wall to shut out others, leaving the classroom, etc.) will get a 1, and those who miss class will get a 0 for the first three absences and -2 for all subsequent ones. At the end of the semester, these daily scores will be used to calculate a participation grade, which will count for 20% of the course grade. I have adopted this system to get out of the unprofitable business of evaluating the excuses of absentees and to get into the far more rewarding business of evaluating contributions made by those who are present in the classroom. Hence in Conn 332 there are no excused or unexcused absences. If you miss a class, for whatever reason, the way to “make up” the absence is by speaking up and sharing your insights in those classes that you do attend.
Absences
When a student misses more than 20% of the classes (in this course, that’s more than 5 absences), I have qualms about putting a grade on a transcript testifying to the world that he or she has performed adequately in my course. In such cases, I may ask the Registrar to withdraw the student from the course, which will result in a grade of W or WF, depending on the time of the semester and/or the quality of the work that has been completed to that point.
Writing assignments
· Five brief response papers (prepared before class) on the day’s assigned readings. Together, they will count for 15% of the course grade.
· A midterm exam in class on Tuesday, October 7. It will count for 15% of the course grade.
· A 7-page paper on the demonic possession or bewitchment of Elizabeth Knapp and/or the Goodwin children. It will be due at Wyatt 141 by 12:00 noon on Friday, November 7. It will count for 25% of the course grade.
· A 10-page paper on the Salem witchcraft crisis. It will require some additional research and should employ at two disciplinary methodologies to analyze and interpret primary source documents. The paper, which substitutes for a final exam, will be due at Wyatt 141 by 12:00 noon on Thursday, December 18. It will count for 25% of the course grade.
Grading scale
Grade ranges are A (93-100), A- (90-92), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (63-66), D- (60-62), and F (below 60). I will round up to a higher letter grade when the numerical score is within 0.2 points of the cutoff (e.g., an 89.8 will be given an A-).
Paper and exam extensions, late work, and missing work
Normally I grant make-ups, extensions, or “Incomplete” grades only for weighty reasons like a family emergency or a serious illness. If you are facing circumstances beyond your control that might prevent you from finishing a paper or taking an exam on time, talk to me in advance of the deadline about the possibility of getting an extension. (Extensions are prospective, not retrospective; that is, an extension granted after the deadline does not cancel the penalty that has already accrued.) As appropriate, provide written documentation supporting your request from a medical professional; the Counseling, Health, and Wellness Services; the Academic Advising Office; the Dean of Students Office; or the Office of Student Accessibility and Accommodations.
Late papers should be slipped under my door at Wyatt 141. If Wyatt is locked, send me the paper by email to stop the penalty clock, but then subsequently give me an unaltered hard copy. Late papers will be marked down 3.5 points on a 100-point scale (about ⅓ of a letter grade) if turned in during the first 24 hours after the deadline. If turned in during the second 24 hours, there will be an additional penalty of 6.5 points (about ⅔ of a letter grade). For each additional 24-hour period, the paper will lose 10 points (a full letter grade), until the points reach 0.
Other policies
If you have a physical, psychological, medical or learning disability that may impact your course work, contact Peggy Perno, Director of Student Accessibility and Accommodations, at 105 Howarth Hall, 253-879-3395. She will determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate, given the course objectives. All information and documentation are confidential.
Students who want to withdraw from the course should read the rules for withdrawal grades in the Academic Handbook (link provided below). Monday, October 13, is the last day to drop with an automatic W; thereafter it is much harder to avoid a WF. Students who are dropped for excessive absences or who abandon the course without officially withdrawing will receive a WF.
Students who cheat or plagiarize, help others do so, deface or steal library materials, or otherwise violate the university’s standards of academic integrity will receive an F for the course and will be reported to the Registrar. Before turning in your first paper read the section on “Academic Integrity” in the Academic Handbook (link provided below). Ignorance of the concept or consequences of plagiarism will not be accepted as an excuse.
In these and all other matters, I follow the policies in the current Academic Handbook at http://www.pugetsound.edu/student-life/personal-safety/student-handbook/academic-handbook/
Classroom Emergency Response Guidance