Witches and Scholars

A leading scholar of the political, religious, and social history of the United States will speak about the Salem Witch Trials this Friday, March 17 at GVSU.



Princeton University History Professor John Murrin will speak at 3:30 p.m. in the Grand River Room of the Kirkhof Center on the Allendale campus. Murrin will address GVSU History students being inducted into the Phi Alpha Theta national honors society. Twenty-nine students will be honored during the ceremony.



He is well qualified to talk about colonial Massachusetts, where the witch trials took place, says Andrew Shankman, a GVSU History professor who was advised by Murrin in graduate school. Murrin is recognized as a leading scholar and a gifted lecturer. He is rare in that he believes good scholarship is strengthened by the ability to communicate your findings to a general audience.



Murrin completed his doctoral research on colonial Massachusetts at Yale University, and has taught at Princeton since 1963. He has published eight books and nearly 30 essays on early American history. He gives many public lectures on topics ranging from the political ideology of the American Revolution to the rise of college football in America.