Fear Thy Neighbor: Spatial Relations in 17th Century New England Witch-Hunt Trials

It is easy to overlook relational history in terms of space and movement because it is not an obvious aspect of the trial records. Nor is it able to be identified by looking solely at individual cases, such as Salem. When scholars look exclusively at learned works and use the trial records to fill in the narrative, they ignore the possibility of the trials to speak for themselves. Only through an in depth examination can a multidimensional understandings shine through. Fear of witchcraft was a given and was not a new concept associated with witchcraft trials. However it is possible to view the accused as a tangible representation of the unnatural world existing within the community, rather than a foreign or outside force. The surrounding environment was paradoxically feared and met with increased curiosity. The relationship between these border places and the domestic space, which included the surrounding land areas of the home, were more fluid as colonists had an increasing knowledge of them. Increased awareness, reflected in the trials, signaled that concern of witches was constant one, and that witch-hunts were a perpetual state of mind

The complexity paradigm for studying human communication: a summary and integration of two fields

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 5). This popular quote from Hamlet might be recast for the field of communication as “There are more things in science than are dreamt of in our philosophies”. This article will review several new and strange ideas from complexity science about how the natural world is organized and how we can go about researching it. These strange ideas, (e.g., deterministic, but unpredictable systems) resonate with many communication phenomena that our field has traditionally had difficulty studying. By reviewing these areas, we hope to add a new, compelling and useful way to think about science that goes beyond the current dominant philosophy of science employed in communication. Though the concepts reviewed here are difficult and often appear at odds with the dominant paradigm; they are not. Instead, this approach will facilitate research on problems of communication process and interaction that the dominant paradigm has struggled to study. Specifically, this article explores the question of process research in communication by reviewing three major paradigms of science and then delving more deeply into the most recent: complexity science. The article provides a broad overview of many of the major ideas in complexity science and how these ideas can be used to study many of the most difficult questions in communication science. It concludes with suggestions going forward for incorporating complexity science into communication

Summer 2017 Commencement.

The PDF for the August 12, 2017 Texas Tech University commencement exercises is 36 pages long

Silent Sentinels: Archaeology, Magic, and the Gendered Control of Domestic Boundaries in New England, 1620-1725

The following dissertation is an historical archaeological study of the material culture of gendered protective magic used by Anglo-Europeans in seventeenth-century New England as a tactic to construct boundaries that mitigated perceived personal, social, spiritual, and environmental dangers. Such boundary construction was paramount in the seventeenth-century battle between good and evil epitomized by the belief in and struggle against witchcraft. This dissertation sought to answer three interrelated research questions: 1) What constitutes protective magical material culture in seventeenth-century contexts and how is it recognizable in the archaeological record? 2) What signifies gender specific protective magical practices and what can these differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships? and 3) In what way and to what degree is the recourse to traditional beliefs significant in coping or risk management contexts? Synthesizing data from historical and folkloristic sources, and reviewing all accessible archaeological site reports and inventories from State Historic Preservation offices and principal site investigators for domestic structures in New England ca. 1620-1725 provided data to catalog and develop a typology of potential magical items. Analyzing these data then allowed the assessment of domestic and gendered patterns of magical risk management strategies. Magical content was frequently embedded within or symbolically encoded in architectural or artifactual details, whose gendered association tended to correspond with gender role activities or responsibilities; however, the general omission of magical interpretations in historical archaeology limits the visibility of potentially magical objects in site reports and inventories, so it is likely a wider range of materials and contexts exist. The final result of this dissertation was the construction of a criterion model for the identification and interpretation of magic in historical archaeological contexts, which extends the notion of ritual from specialized places and materials, and communal behaviors to include quotidian objects and settings, and individual practices. Ultimately, the results of this dissertation extend the field of the archaeology of ritual and magic in particular, and the broader field of archaeology more generally by providing theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and recognizing how magical belief contributes to physical and metaphoric boundary construction and maintenance

Complete Issue 8(1)

Complete digitized issue (volume 8, issue 1, November 1970) of Speaker & Gavel

Ship of wealth: Massachusetts merchants, foreign goods, and the transformation of Anglo-America, 1670-1760

This study examines capitalism and cultural change in early New England. The research focuses on leading merchants in Boston and Salem, Massachusetts from the last third of the seventeenth century to 1760. During this period, merchants, royal officials, and professionals formed a prominent influential elite that refashioned the town landscape and social structure of colonial ports. Merchants adopted a new Anglo-American worldview that gradually supplanted Puritan spiritual and providential understanding of the world and, instead, emphasized visible, material characteristics as the source of value in science, commerce, and consumption. The resultant world of goods, created a social marketplace where identity, shaped by owning and displaying high-style goods and genteel manners, could be purchased by anyone with money. Incorporating both exotic imports and foreign merchants, the new culture fostered capitalism and helped to dispel earlier conflicts over sectarian beliefs and ethnic origins that had plagued Boston and Salem. Thus, this study argues that it was consumption and a worldview that placed value in the material not Puritan asceticism, as sociologist Max Weber and his supporters insist, that initiated the spirit of modern capitalism