HIS2185 ¨C Witchcraft on Trial: Analyzing Power, Justice, and Legal Narratives through Digital Tools

Course content

This course is a Blended Intensive Program (BIP) seminar. It brings together students from four partner universities to examine how legal narratives are constructed, contested, and preserved in historical court records. Focusing on the Salem witchcraft trials as a central case study, the seminar combines historical interpretation with hands-on training in digital humanities tools to provide participants with both theoretical insight and practical experience.

Participants will work with digitized court records from the Salem trials to investigate how accusations, testimonies, and verdicts were embedded in the cultural, political, and social tensions of the time. Through this focused case study, the program invites students to consider how power was exercised, resisted, and recorded within the legal system, and how historical sources both reveal and obscure the lived experiences of individuals involved.

A key component of the seminar is the introduction to digital humanities methods that enhance and complicate traditional approaches to historical sources. Digital history tools will be introduced as a means to critically interrogate the sources, uncover hidden patterns, and ask new questions about the structures and dynamics of justice.

Admission to the course

This course was a Blended Intensive Program (BIP) held in Autumn 2025 at Kadir Has Universitesi Istanbul, with participants from Kadir Has Universitesi Istanbul, University of Oslo, Universit?t Wien and Universit?t Bielefeld.

Teaching

The course has a digital and in in-class component. The digital component will be a two-hour seminar. The rest of the course is held over a week (five full working days).?

The teaching language is English.?

Compulsory assignments

To qualify for the exam, students must attend the teaching (both the digital and the physical part).

Examination

The course is assessed as:

• Construct and present a group research project using the Salem witchcraft trials as a primary source and by using digital tools.

• Write a short reflection paper. The paper should be approximately 500 words long.

More about examinations at UiO

• Use of sources and citations
• How to use AI as a student
• Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
• Withdrawal from an exam
• Illness at exams / postponed exams
• Explanation of grades and appeals
• Resitting an exam
• Cheating/attempted cheating

You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.