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Puritanism



  • Who Still Needs the Carnivalesque?

    by Ed Simon

    Despite its repeated theorization, the political meaning of carnivals and the social inversions they temporarily enable remains hotly debated. 


  • What Elizabeth Johnson’s Exoneration Teaches about the Salem Witch Hunt

    by Tony Fels

    The Massachusetts legislature recently exonerated Elizabeth Johnson, though her confession and conviction shows how "members of the Puritan communities of early Massachusetts could readily convince themselves that in some way or other, perhaps at a moment of weakness, they really had allowed Satan into their lives."



  • Breaking Up With Marilynne Robinson Over the Dark Side of Puritanism

    by Peter Laarman

    A minister and activist argues that the novelist and essayist's defense of the New England Puritans as prototypical human rights heroes ignores the very clear limits that historians have identified for Puritanism's conceptions of social belonging.