The Afterlife of Witch Hunting
I. Witch Hunts After Salem Image: The Mystic Massacre, May 26, 1637
II. Medicine & Psychiatry
Image: Aegidius Albertinus, Hirnschleiffer (Cologne: Munich, 1664) III. Commercialization & Domestication Clip: Introduction to Bewitched (1964-1972) IV. Satanic Panic: Witch Hunts Without Witches Image right: John Mix Stanley, The Trial of Red Jacket (1869). Smithsonian American Art Museum Red Jacket (1758-1830) was a famous leader of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Nation. In this ambitious painting, John Mix Stanley showed the chief defending himself against a charge of witchcraft. Under his white robe is the red jacket given to him by a British officer for his help as a messenger during the American Revolution. Stanley trained as a portrait painter, and all of the figures in this work are portraits of identifiable individuals. . |
Modern Attacks on Reputed Witches: Lynching in Grønning,
Denmark, 1722
Image right: a postcard from the 1920s depicting the conveyance of a witch to the prison tower in Lemgo. Stadtarchiv Lemgo. Beginning in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries, witchcraft prosecution became the object of intense interest for antiquarians, folklorists, and historians. Through their activities, the story of witch-trials was interwoven with local historical consciousness, became part of emerging "national" memories, and imparted (spurious) historical depth to ongoing debates between liberals and conservatives, Protestants and Catholics. Image source: historicum.net. |