{"id":8374,"date":"2013-10-24T09:44:56","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T13:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8374"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:09:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:09:49","slug":"english-professor-michele-tarter-studies-witch-history-warts-and-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8374","title":{"rendered":"English Professor Michele Tarter studies witch history\u2014warts and all"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MicheleLiseTarter_web\"<\/a>
Professor Michele Tarter wants to \u201creclaim the stories of wise women and hags\u201d that have been muddled by superstition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

English Professor Michele Tarter<\/strong>\u2019s interest in witches extends far beyond the commercialized green faces and cackling laughs to a history rich with misunderstanding and scapegoating. She wants to \u201creclaim the stories of wise women and hags\u201d that have been muddled by superstition.<\/p>\n

\u201cSociety loves and is fascinated by the witch, and also hates and fears the witch. And that conflict is what keeps her going,\u201d Tarter explains. \u201cSociety keeps recreating her for its own purposes. She\u2019s the nonconformist and the outcast, but she’s also mysterious and magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarter\u2019s interest in witch history stems from her dissertation research on British and early American Quaker women. She was amazed, she says, by the accounts of women accused of being witches and the torture they endured. \u201cI started exploring why they were charged and why they were being punished. I found that, uniformly, these women were very strong, very nonconformist, and they were threatening to mainstream society.\u201d That theme of nonconformity is also found in the witch histories of Europe and New England, Tarter says.<\/p>\n

Through the years, Tarter has studied the witch\u2019s evolution from revered village healer to hated and hunted scapegoat. \u201cShe was the doctor, the apothecary, the herbalist, and the midwife. So how did that woman, the wise woman who was honored and revered get turned into evil? That question is at the heart of what I teach.”<\/p>\n

Students in Tarter\u2019s The Witch in Literature class learn of the injustices these women endured. \u201cThe witch craze in Europe is called \u2018The Burning Times,\u2019\u201d Tarter explains. \u201cAnd it\u2019s so horrible the number of women who were killed. They were innocent; they did nothing. They were scapegoated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarter describes the study of witch torture as a \u201cpainful but necessary\u201d lesson in group mentality and tolerance. \u201cTeaching about the witch is really teaching about something so much larger in the human psyche. The capacity to band together in that mass mentality, to not think and just react. Our society, across time, has trouble with difference. And if the only thing this course does is inspire people to tolerate and embrace differences then, \u2018rock on!\u2019 I succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English Professor Michele Tarter\u2019s interest in witches extends far beyond the commercialized green faces and cackling laughs to a history rich with misunderstanding and scapegoating. She wants to \u201creclaim the stories of wise women and hags\u201d that have been muddled by superstition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":8375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}