ENGH 513: Topics in Literary and Cultural Studies

ENGH 513-C01: Salem's Witches in Literature
(Summer 2025)

Online

Section Information for Summer 2025

Over the course of the Salem Witch episode of 1692/93, which took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, approximately 185 people were accused of witchcraft and over three-quarters of them were women. By the close of this dark but foundational chapter in American history, twenty people had been executed, and a number had died in prison. The Salem story foregrounds questions about the power of women and girls both as witches and as those afflicted by the actions of supposed witches. Often an unmarried woman who lives on the margins of society, the witch is a cultural figure through whom ideas about identity—gender, sexuality, race, ability, class, labor, and religion—get articulated. 

In this course, we will examine Salem's witches as they have been represented in American literature from the end of the Civil War to the present day. We will begin our inquiry with French Caribbean novelist Maryse Condé’s award-winning novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (1986) and the theoretical frameworks offered by postcolonial, queer, and Black feminist studies. We will then jump back to 1865 and move through imaginative literature by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Arthur Miller, Ann Petry, and contemporary playwright Kimberly Belflower whose play John Proctor is the Villain (2024) premieres on Broadway in March 2025. This course should be of interest to students in literature, cultural studies, and creative writing as well as those who hope to or already teach in secondary education as Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible remains a staple of the public-school curriculum. Students will be assessed on weekly discussions and collaborative readings, one short, recorded individual presentation, and a final project of their own design.

Course Information from the University Catalog