IATH takes scholarship into the 21st centuryBy Jon Bowen, A&S Online, September 2003
On September 18, 1692, Giles Cory was "pressed to
death" after being accused of witchcraft. While all the other men
and women who died in the Salem Witch Trials were hanged, Cory
refused a trial by jury and thus got the dreaded sentence of
peine forte et dure , which calls for rocks to be piled on
top of the accused until he expires under the load. In Cory's case,
it took two days. Obstinate to the end, his last words were, "More
weight!" The players in Ray's sandbox include Bernard Rosenthal, an English professor at the University of Binghamton who serves as editor-in-chief of transcriptions; a team of managers, editors and assistants working at universities in the United States, Sweden and Finland; and the technical experts on IATH's staff who do the behind-the-scenes work that makes the website run. The Salem Witch Trials website is just one of the jewels in IATH's crown. Other research projects sponsored by the Institute include Ed Ayers' The Valley of the Shadow ; Stephen Railton's Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture ; Jerome McGann's Rossetti Archive ; as well as more than 40 other digital projects, in various stages of completion, covering music, linguistics, ethics, architecture and more. |