Horror fans rejoice, because this week we're talking about The Witch! Join us to learn more about what you had to do to get expelled from Puritan communities, ritual uses of baby blood, apples, the Song of Songs, and more! 

Content warning: Infanticide

Sources:

Film Background:

Stephen Saito, "Persistence of Vision: Inside the Making of the Witch, a Horror Classic for the Ages," MovieMaker, available at https://www.moviemaker.com/persistence-of-vision-the-witch-robert-eggers/ Kevin Fallon, "The Witch: The Making of the Year's Scariest Movie," Daily Beast, available at https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-witch-the-making-of-the-years-scariest-movie Simon Abrams, "The Witch," Rogerebert.com, available at https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-witch-2016

Song of Songs: NIV Study Bible William Phipps, "The Plight of the Song of Songs," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 42, 1 (1974) Belden C. Lane, "Two Schools of Desire: Nature and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Puritanism," Church History 69, 2 (2000) Julie Sievers, "Refiguring the Song of Songs: John Cotton's 1655 Sermon and the Antinomian Controversy," New England Quarterly 76, 1 (2003)

Expulsion from Puritan Communities: Transcript of the Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 1637: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/WebPub/history/mckayunderstanding1e/0312668872/Primary_Documents/US_History/Transcript%20of%20the%20Trial%20of%20Anne%20Hutchinson.pdf Nan Goodman, "Banishment, Jurisdiction, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century New England: The Case of Roger Williams," Early American Studies 7, 1 (2009) Ben Barker-Benfield, "Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude Toward Women," Feminist Studies 1, 2 (1972) James F. Cooper Jr. "Anne Hutchinson and the 'Lay Rebellion' Against Clergy," New England Quarterly 61, 3 (1988) Richard J. Ross, "The Career of Puritan Jurisprudence," Law and History Review 26, 2 (2008)

Witchcraft and Baby Blood: Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze Lindemann, Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust Bucholz and Key, Early Modern England David D. Hall, Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638-1693, second edition (Duke University Press, 1999). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hph70.6 Lyndal Roper, "'Evil Imaginings and Fantasies': Child-Witches and the End of the Witch Craze," Past & Present 167 (May 2000): 107-139. https://www.jstor.org/stable/651255 Robert Blair St. George (ed.), Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America (Cornell University Press, 2000). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1fxmmf.11 Deborah Kelly Kloepfer, "Cotton Mather's "Dora": The Case History of Mercy Short," Early American Literature 44:1 (2009): 3-38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27750112 Aviva Briefel, "Devil in the Details: The Uncanny History of The Witch (2015)," Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal 49:1 (Summer 2019). Mary Beth Norton, "Witchcraft in the Anglo-American Colonies," OAH Magazine of History 17:4 (July 2003): 5-10. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25163614

Apples: "9 Things You Didn't Know About New England's Favorite Autumn Fruit," NPR (19 September 2014). https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2014/09/18/apples-boston Rowan Jacobsen, "Apples: A New England History," Harvard Museum of Natural History, YouTube (16 January 2019). https://youtu.be/9C4yTA_hUmE https://www.beaconhillhousehistories.org/blog/blacksstone David Shulman, "Apples in America," American Speech 29:1 (1954): 77-79. https://www.jstor.org/stable/453602 https://www.newportthisweek.com/articles/a-century-of-bountiful-fruit/