Student bewitches history scholars
Posted by magazine
What do religion, witchcraft and New York City have in common? Plenty, if you ask Amanda Kamps, a junior in history at Missouri S&T.
Kamps was selected as a 2008 finalist in the Gilder Lehrman History Scholars Program and was invited to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York for a week-long program of lectures, sight-seeing and field trips.
As part of the application process, Kamps submitted a portion of a research paper she had written on 17th century views of the devil and witchcraft. Using sermons from clergy and testimonies from ordinary people during the Salem Witch Trials, Kamps compared the characterizations of the clergymen with those of the ordinary people in an attempt to see how their views differed.
