Description
Book SynopsisWhy have so many recent scholars of colonial witchcraft written sympathetically about the accusers while ignoring their victims?For most historians living through the fascist and communist tyrannies that culminated in World War II and the Cold War, the Salem witch trials signified the threat to truth and individual integrity posed by mass ideological movements. Work on the trials produced in this era, including Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Marion L. Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials, left little doubt that most intellectuals' sympathies lay with the twenty innocent victims who stood up to Puritan intolerance by choosing to go to their deaths rather than confess to crimes they had never committed. In Switching Sides, Tony Fels traces a remarkable shift in scholarly interpretations of the Salem witch hunt from the postWorld War II era up through the present. Fels explains that for a new generation of historians influenced by the radi
Trade ReviewThis is a book that is important in college, especially for young historians, because it helps us become better ones and shows us that ways of looking at things do change. Even people who are not historians will find this interesting, as it shows that history is a living, breathing, topic.
—
Manhattan Book ReviewThere is much to learn from Fels' in-depth exploration . . . [
Switching Sides] is an important work for anyone teaching historiography and/or Salem witchcraft . . . a useful tool in introducing students to how history is studied and written.
—Francis J. Bremer, Millersville University of Pennsylvania,
Teaching History: A Journal of MethodsTable of ContentsList of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Starkey's Devil in Massachusetts and the Post–World War II Consensus
2. Boyer and Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed and theAnti-capitalist Critique
An Aside
3. Demos's Entertaining Satan and the Functionalist Perspective
4. Karlsen's Devil in the Shape of a Woman andFeminist Interpretations
5. Norton's In the Devil's Snare and Racial Approaches I
6. Norton's In the Devil's Snare and Racial Approaches II
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Notes
Bibliography
Index
