Forum Network

Public stations. Community Partners. World-class speakers. Free lecture videos. See what you think.

a public media service of

Public Broadcasting Service National Public Radio

By Topic

By Region

By Period

You may be using an older version of the Adobe Flash Player. To enjoy multimedia content on WGBH.org, please click here to upgrade to the latest version of the free Flash player.

Downloads

You must be logged in to download content.

Please Login or Register.

Remembering the Witch Trials in 19th Century America

October 31, 2008

Gretchen A. Adams assistant professor, history, Texas Tech

Gretchen A. Adams discusses how the Salem witch trials have provided subject matter for a wide array of dramatists, poets, scholars, fiction writers, and amateur detectives. While critics of McCarthyism derided the period's anti-Communist campaign as a "witch hunt," the 1950s Broadway drama The Crucible underscored the link between contemporary political investigations and the 1692 Salem witch trials. Adams posits that this 20th century cultural moment, often cited as the emergence of such associations, actually followed a long and colorful history of appeals to American memories of the witch trials.

Series:

Ghostly Galleons Series

Topics: History | Literature & Philosophy

Tags: Human Rights | Non-Fiction

Presented By WGBH and Boston Athenaeum:

Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Town Hall: Part I

CSI:NY's Hill Harper and filmmaker Gary Ross join local students and a panel of esteemed local experts for a timely Town Hall Meeting entitled, "Lincoln, Douglass and the Transformative Power of Words." The event seeks to underscore the importance of education in the lives of Abraham Lincol

What’s a Fair Start? / What Do We Deserve?

Lecture Fifteen: "What's a Fair Start?"

Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the 21st Century

Physician and humanitarian James Orbinski discusses his new book, An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century.

Thomas Ricks: General Petraeus and the American Military in Iraq

Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post correspondent Thomas E. Ricks discusses his newly in paperback exploration of the Iraq war, The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Arguing Affirmative Action / What’s the Purpose?

Lecture Seventeen: "Arguing Affirmative Action"

Hired Guns? / For Sale: Motherhood

Lecture Nine: "Hired Guns?"

The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America

Author: Gretchen A. Adams

Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (2009)

Binding: Hardcover, 240 pages

Login or register to post comments