Kerric Harvey was the expert speaker at the Olney Theatre Center event “Behind-the-Scenes: A Larger Context” following a production of “The Crucible“ on April 21 in Olney, Maryland. Arthur Miller’s classic play uses the 1692 Salem witch trials as a metaphor for political repression during the McCarthy era.
Dr. Harvey’s 60-minute presentation to a packed house addressed what a witch hunt looks like in 2018 and how a witch hunt took shape in Nazi Germany. She also explored how the choreographed mob mentality of a witch hunt intersects with social media and discussed how our elevation of personal stories to the level of cultural myth is altered by new technologies.
The subsequent Q&A session explored issues such as “…how stories like those told in the Salem Witch Trails become part of our worldview, how narratives are shaped and the social and political impact they have on everyday life,” a series of crucial questions which Dr. Harvey expanded to include contemporary versions of “spectral evidence,” “guilt by association” and social blaming as a political strategies within online and social media.