On Wednesday, September 23, at 7:00 pm in the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Reichert Planetarium, Dr. Tara Rider of Stony Brook University will give a lecture on The Devil in New York: The Witchcraft Trial of Goody Garlick.
“The most famous American witch-hunt began in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts,” Rider said. “Yet, more than three decades before that notorious event, Long Island had its very own witchcraft trial – the trial of Goody Garlick.
“Accusations of flying on poles and cavorting with the Devil ran rampant in the colonies during the 17th century and led to hundreds of accusations of witchcraft. To understand what happened during these trials, we must first understand the stresses of ordinary 17th-century life in New York and why the fear of witches existed. The trial of Goody Garlick in 1658 will act as a lens to understand the hysteria associated with these accusations.
“The belief in the supernatural has been ubiquitous throughout history. As many people said, “When you can’t explain the weather, the harvest fails, and the cow won’t give milk—clearly, it’s a witch. But was it?”
Tara Rider is a senior lecturer at Stony Brook University in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences with a multidisciplinary background in history, marine studies, and sustainability. Her research focuses on how nature, gender, and race are entwined with questions of power, culture, and identity.