[This past
weekend, we held the fifth annual New England American Studies
Association (NEASA) Colloquium.
So this week I’ll share some responses to each of the five colloquia to date,
leading up to a special weekend post on AmericanStudies in 2015!]
On one more
layer to our analyses of a complex, crucial American city.
I spent a
week’s series of posts following up the 2012 NEASA Colloquium, and the
presentations and conversations about Salem,
Massachusetts that it featured. I won’t repeat here all that I highlighted
in those posts, and will instead keep today’s post relatively short in the
hopes that you’ll check out those brief 2012 follow ups and then return here to
share your thoughts on them and Salem (and other such American spaces)!
I will, however,
add one more thing here. I have returned to Salem many times in the three years
since that colloquium (it remains my favorite historic site in Massachusetts,
and likewise features my favorite single public site I’ve encountered, the
Witch Trials Memorial), and have found myself again and again thinking about
the same question: do the city’s more tacky elements (the occult shops and ghost
tours, the over-the-top Witch Museum, the reenactments of chasing a “witch”
down the street) represent a contrast to the amazing sites and spaces?; or do they
instead bring tourists and visitors to the city and give them the chance to
experience the best sides of the city? I asked a pop culture version of that
question in this
piece for Ethos Review, wondering
whether popular versions of Salem witches add to the mythologizing or bring
audiences to the histories. I can’t say that I have come up with definitive
answers to either of these questions yet—so I guess I’ll have to keep returning
to Salem to think more about them!
Next follow up tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other complex American spaces you’d analyze?
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