William Byrd and Plantation Life

Judging from the excerpt you read from William Byrd’s secret diary, what do you think is most important to him in his day-to-day life? Why are those things important? How would you describe his general outlook and tone in the diary? Do you think his diary entries are consistent with the description of his life that he offers in his letter to Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery? Why or why not?

Sewall, Copley, and Emergent Consumer Culture

What role do material goods play in Samuel Sewall’s courtship of Katherine Winthrop (the widow of a descendant of John Winthrop)?  To what extent do Sewall and Winthrop have a shared consumer vocabulary, a shared sense of self defined in part by goods?  Are there ways in which their understandings of consumer goods separate them?

OR

How do the consumer goods in Copley’s portraits define the people in them?  Explain how Copley intends to portray one or two of his sitters and the ways that particular material goods around them enable that portrayal.

Jonathan Edwards and Revealed Religion

How does Jonathan Edwards think people can know when they have been converted to God? What are the language and images through which Edwards conveys the experience of conversion? What is Edwards trying to explain to Benjamin Colman about “the extraordinary circumstances …with respect to religion” unfolding in his town and how does he do it?

Witches, Criminals and Deviance in New England

Looking at the transciprts of the witch trials, it might be fair to say they have somewhat predictable narrative arcs, a ritual pattern of unfolding.  How would you describe that pattern?  What are the variations on it?  Since Cotton Mather was neither stupid nor ignorant, do these examinations, when coupled with Wonders of the Invsible World, why he believed in witches?

Bradford and Morton

How would you compare Bradford’s first sight of the continent with other first sightings we have seen, for example, in the accounts of Columbus and Vespucci?  What do the differences among them suggest about the viewers and their purposes in the Americas?  In the absence of cannibals and amazons, what are the primary symbolic and literal threats to Bradford’s colony and how do they change over time?