This course will examine New England cultural formation in the context of emergent theocratic institutions and the production of criminality. We will explore the relationship between religion and politics, law and the literature of criminality, emergent structures of domination, and popular arts of resistance at three moments of cultural transformation. First, the institution of Puritan law will be read in the context of colonial plantation and the oppositional practices of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. The decades following the Restoration of Charles II marked an emergent politics of empire that destabilized colonial identity and structures of authority. We will read these broad challenges in light of local practices of subversion, including disruptive religious performance, "unsanctioned" sexual activity, and the practice of folk religion and magic. Finally, we will consider the proliferation of crime at the century's end, including the crimes of piracy, murder, and emergent "civil disobedience."