Doe as Thou Wouldest be Done By: Mental Illness Relief Responses in Puritan New England
Description
Rebecca R. Farias ’22G, History
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Adrian Weimer, History and Classics
The Master’s thesis, a work in progress, will be presented to the History Department in May 2022 for completion of my degree program. The thesis is titled “Doe as Thou Wouldest Be Done By: Relief Responses to Mental Illness in Puritan New England.” Drawing from poverty petitions and other under-utilized primary source records from the 1600s, this thesis analyzes the many factors that influenced the treatment of the mentally ill in the early New England colonies, including gender, religious beliefs, criminality, and social status. Dr. Adrian Weimer is the primary advisor and mentor for this project, and Drs. Edward Andrews and Steven Smith are the secondary advisors. I have presented excerpts from the thesis at the 2022 Disability at the Intersection of History, Culture, Religion, Gender, and Health Conference and the 2022 Conference for Graduate Scholarship on Power, Adversity, and Networks, and I will also present at the Providence College 2022 Veritas Conference.
