Im with the Salem Award Foundation for human rights and social justice. This is our 25th anniversary. We were formed with the idea of helping to keep alive the lessons of the trials, promoting awareness, empathy and understanding. One of the main ways we do this is by supporting and being involved in educational events, just like today. I think you all have in your folders cards like this, which are an invitation to our commemorative activity celebration at the witch trials memorial tomorrow. Im here today to introduce our keynote speaker. Before i do that, ive noticed that we havent really talked about the people who have sponsored this symposium. Ive mentioned the Salem Award Foundation. Essex National Heritage has been a Fabulous Team player. But i have to tell you donna seeger has been driving this bus. [ applause ]. And i really i know shes pulled the entire History Department along in her wake. [ laughter ] but i wanted to make sure she got credit for the incredible amount of hard work and coordination that it takes to pull off an event like this. Its been a wonderful day and im glad to see you all here. So onto what im supposed to be talking about. Im glad that our keynote address is in the afternoon rather than the morning, which is often the case, because i think weve all had time to stop and think about what a thorny problem we face in just understanding, interpreting, teaching and commemorating something that happened 325 years ago. But perhaps nobody has given more thought to how we commemorate sites like this than our speaker today, dr. Kenneth foote. I had planned to pull a few choice nuggets from his resume to use for my introduction, but that has not been possible. Im not an academic. Im from the Business World flr where the mantra is a onepage resume, possibly slide into two. So i was somewhat unprepared for at least ten pages of golden nuggets. Instead, i am using a little bit from what he has posted on the uconn website where he chairs the department of geography and is a professor. He joined the faculty there in 2013. His particular interests are in cart ography, Geographic Information science. G. I. S. , particularly internet based applications. American and european landscape history focusing on public memory and commemoration and issues of geography in higher education, particularly Instructional Technologies and professional development, undergraduates, graduates and graduate students and early career faculty. Hes here today because of his keen interest in what we might call the landscape of tragedy. His book shadowed ground if you havent read it, i highly recommend it. It really awakened us to think about how we deal with places where bad things happened. How such places are marked or not marked continues to be his area of interest. He is a graduate of the university of wisconsin, got his masters and doctorate at the university of chicago. While shadowed ground is probably his most well known book, he has authored ten other books, more academically oriented and enough articles and chapters and contributions that, if i listed them, would take up his entire allotted speaking time. Prior to joining the faculty at uconn he had been associated with both the university of texas at austin and the university of colorado at boulder where he chaired the graduate studies program and is now professor emeritus. He has been the president of several geographic and industry related associations and has won numerous prizes related to geography and particularly of interest to me in mentoring people. So important. And i know we are all going to value what he has to say today on how what happened here in salem has played out across america. It is indeed my honor to introduce dr. Kenneth foote. [ applause ] thank you shelby. And id like to thank her second of donna seger who invited me for the symposium. Id also like to thank the salem awards foundation for helping organize this as well as well as Salem State University for helping sponsor the program and maybe give a callout for the Geography Program at salem state. I have worked with a lot of those geographers. Its a great group here at salem state. It really is an honor for me to be here at salem state for this symposium. My first visit to salem was in 1984. I have to say in a sense salem changed my life. I have to say that ive been haunted by what i found in 1984. And what i saw in salem in 1984 has shaped much of my research over the last 30 years, as ill relate to you today. For the next 40 or 45 minutes, id like to reflect on the four questions that are on the first slide. Id like to put salem in a broader context of other sites that have been stigmatized by events of violence and tragedy. Salem is not alone in that context. Many people today have been mentioning other sites that have been affected by events like the witchcraft killings. The first thing i want to do is focus on comparisons between salem and other sites in the United States and a few from overseas as well. Then id like to focus on why it is that sites like salem are so difficult to commemorate. The tensions involved in these sites that are both shameful but also have some reason to be remembered. Id like to go from there to many of the comments that come from the previous panel, which is whats different about salem . This kitschy celebration of witchcraft and so forth. We have zombies walking down the street and so forth. Its different than other places that have been touched by tragedy. [ laughter ] i dont think i have to say a lot more because thats been well covered. It does raise that issue of what comes next. What about the future for salem, salem witchcraft . Over the last couple of weeks ive been kind of reviewing the growth and scholarship. I dont think there can be enough material on the salem witchcraft episode. It is so important. I really am impressed by the number of books, websites, movies, television, events and so forth that have been focusing on witchcraft. In fact, i was really a bit humbled by the people who were on the panel and gave lectures earlier today, because we have such expertise here in the room today that i dont want to claim to be an expert on salem. My expertise as a geographer focuses on sites like salem. Dont take me to task if i get a name wrong or mispronounce something. But we really do have some wonderful experts, and i have gained a lot from the discussions today. But my interest in salem comes from the standpoint of geography. When i first visited salem in 1984, i was very much interested in the study of the sense of place, the deep emotional bonds people develop to the environment, to the places where they live. It might be a persons home, where you live, where you go as a retreat with your family to enjoy and relax and live comfortably. It may be a place like marblehead, in the upper left hand corner, a wonderful place, beautiful place to relax and enjoy the seashore. Or it might be someplace that you enjoy going to visit the friends or be with friends. Down in little havana, the domino park is one of the centers of community. People go there and stay all day long playing dominos and cards and so forth, and talking with their friends and sharing some food. Or it may just be a place of contemplation. I have this photograph of where thor therouxs cabin was around walden pond. People go there to honor him and think about his writings and so forth. When i first came to salem, i was interested in these ideas. But i only came up from boston on a day trip. I was trying to get away for an afternoon and drove up. This was in 84. You know, i spent the day looking at the maritime history and Industrial History and so forth, interesting places. There was nothing much about the witchcraft episode at this point. This is 1984. So at one point i asked people, well, where did the executions take place. People said, well, it was somewhere over there, gallows hill. We dont know exactly. Nobody really knows. Somewhere over there. I found that really curious. I realized then it was a very important episode, but to actually lose the location was really quite striking to me. Within a month i was in berlin, germany. This was before the reunification of east and west germany. I was in berlin to give a talk at a conference and i was struck again by the highly stigmatized sites associated with the nazi regime. The division of the city, the war. The wall in berlin was put up precisely to isolate some of the sites of the nazi power so that people couldnt get to them. It was still so highly stigmatized. That summer was also the time of one of the worst mass murders in American History, the shootings at the Mcdonalds Restaurant in san ysidro, california. I learned about that while i was traveling. I got to thinking, what happens when these events occur. How do these events affect that emotional bond to space . Do people feel a deeper attachment because a loved one may have died at a site, or does it break that attachment . Since then, ive been very interested in this idea of how events of violence and tragedy affect this sense of place. Our motive, our effective bonds with place. Over that period of time, i visited dozens or hundreds of sites, both in the United States and in europe, because much of my work now is in Central Europe and hungary. I have visited sites of individual tragedies, murders, mass murders, homicide, suicides and so forth. Ive also visited sites like cherry, illinois, mine disaster where in a single day a community lost almost all of its men in a mine disaster, in a coal mine collapse. Ive also visited a lot of sites associated with the revolutionary war, the civil war and other engagements like that where we have different approaches to the portrayal of history, and sites associated with the European American encounters with native americans, the history of japanese americans, chinese americans, hispanic americans in the United States, and also events that are very equivocal meaning, maybe a little bit like salem, like the Branch Davidian fire in 1993, the horrible event in waco, texas, where so many people died, and leading, of course, two years later to the bombing in Oklahoma City. Now, after many of these visits in documenting all of these sites, i would say theres no single outcome when tragedy strikes. In fact, what i portrayed in shadowed ground was a continuum of outcomes. Some events are so important, or they become judged as so important that they become saktfied, is the word i used. They become so important that people set aside the site for that particular event. On the far side, on the right hand side, i think we have almost the opposite. Its obliteration. These are so shocking and shameful that people really want to scour the evidence away. For years i put gallows hill down on that far side, because i think that in a sense that is what happened. It was afterwards remove the evidence, forget about it, its been obliterated. Maybe its a little bit closer to two of the other outcomes there. Youll see rectification, which is by far the most common outcome, which is we dont see any great significant in this event and were going to cleanse it and put it back right. Were going to reuse it or we employ it for some other activity. I think maybe and well come to this a little bit later. Maybe salem is somewhere in there between rectification and obliteration. But i think there is some greater tensions there we need to discuss as well. There is another outcome that i often times see which i call designation. Thats the idea that something important happened here, but it isnt quite enough to push it towards sakt fi sanctification. I have some examples here. Well come back to gettysburg in a minute. For example, in 1920, a terrorist attack on wall street in new york, who knows of it anymore. The last physical evidence of that bombing is just a few shrapnel scars on the side of a Bank Building on wall street. So thats kind of faded from view. Here we have the eastland disaster in the Chicago River where a cruise ship tipped over in a harbor just as it was loading and claimed as many passengers as the titanic. Although the titanic was a greater disaster because far more crew died on the titanic. But lets take a look at these outcomes in a little bit more detail before we go on and turn a bit more towards salem. I want to note, if you look down in the lower righthand corner of this power point, youll see an important point about this. That sanctification occurs rarely but people think it happens more often because its so visible. We tend to see sites that are sanctified because they are very visible in the landscape. We see them because theyre very pronounced but i would say they only occur in three sorts of situations. The first is when there is a moral or ethical lesson from the event itself. I point to gettysburg because its one of the most decorated landscapes in america. Virtually every engagement in the threeday battle is marked on the ground there. Or it may be a sense of community loss. Here i have a memorial in wisconsin which was destroyed in the largest forest fire in u. S. History, same night as the chicago fire, for larger fire, claimed more lives than chicago but is largely hidden. Martyrs. President s, great leaders, even great entertainers. John lennon. We have Strawberry Fields in central park just across from where he was shot at the dakota apartment building. Those sorts of three things. Sank sanctification is important because it means were setting aside part of the environment for a purpose. This is dedicated to the memory or remembering or commemorating some event or person. Designation is a step oftentimes on the way towards sanctification. In the examples i have here, i can tell you about the process. The first photograph there is of the Lorraine Motel in memphis, tennessee. Thats the balcony where Martin Luther king jr. Was assassinated. The site was marked like that for years and years. I took the photograph in the 1980s. The marking was done by the owner walter bailey. He lost his wife the day after the murder. It took 20 years for him to move this gradually towards sanctification. Getting support from the city of memphis, the county, and the government to turn this into a major civil rights education center. This moved it in that direction. In the lower lefthand corner there, one of the japaneseamerican internment camps in california was a stepping stone towards sanctification. The families and their children went back there in a pilgrimage. Those pilgrimages were very important in gradually building towards legislation for the families illegally interned there during the second world war. I have saved rectification because it is the most common. In many cases we dont see that significance in some of the daytoday violence and some of the daytoday tragedies that go on in american society. Many of these sites are simply put right. The photograph here is part of my familys lore. I wasnt born yet when this crash occurred in madison, wisconsin, but wmy mother told stories about this because she heard it happen. Our window to our kitchen in 1953 looked out towards the University Arboretum and she saw the plane spiraling in and hitting this area. Its been left to go back to an arboretum setting. The last one, four, obliteration. Events seen as so shameful. Mass murder. Gang, mob violence. Tragedies involving gross negligence. Taboo subjects are sometimes so shocking and shameful that communities try to destroy all the evidence. They dont want to be reminded and they dont want people to come to look. They want to scour the landscape accordingly. In the upper right is the site of the homestead of ed geen. He was a murderer. A necrophiliac. He is the inspiration for norman bates in psycho and also the texas chainsaw massacre. If you get an idea where i am going. The residents of plainfield were so disturbed, when he was caught and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward in madison, the neighbors were really upset because people kept coming to visit. They were vandalizing the farm stead and so forth. Eventually someone went out and burned all the buildings. The land went up on auction. It was sold and planted as a pine plantation for pulp paper. Thats what it looks like. In newtown, connecticut, we know of the horrible mass murder at the elementary school. When the building was finally torn down the contractors walled off the entire site. The remains of the site had been buried anonymously somewhere. The contractors had to agree to keep it completely anonymous so that no one would visit the sites. The school has been rebuilt. New design, slightly different footprint. They finally decided on putting up a memorial there but its been a hard struggle for the community to lose so many children and teachers. Finally, across the river from cincinnati. A popular supper club. The owner was very careless. Got around all the fire restrictions, building codes and so forth. A fire claimed almost 300 lives. From what i can tell, no one has been able to rebuild on that site because its still so highly stigmatized. What i found in my research, its not as though places get to one position on this scale and stay there. Its constantly moving back and forth. We can see changes occurring through time, as traditions build, as people reinterpret the past and see value in some events and less value in others. I like to show the way we see the national past. In the lower right hand corner, sites you may have walked on or probably looked at, this is the precise location where the revolutionary war broke out. Where is it . This is a test. Boston massacre. The star at the center of the walkway is the precise place where he fell on that spot, the free black sailor. That wasnt marked for another hundred years. It was only looking back. Now weve gotten past the first hundred years, now its time to mark these sites that are associated with the war. And 100 years later that was a marker put up on boston common. Thats the second photograph from the left. Then bunker hill. We see this big obilisk as we drive into boston. I think it was finally finished in 1875. It took a long time. This was raised by private donations and fundraising, it was not done by the national government. It was pride of place in the sense that this is a really significant event because the ameri