Mary Beth Norton

About

Mary Beth Norton is an American historian, specializing in American colonial history and well known for her work on women's history and the Salem witch trials. She is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emeritus of American History at the Department of History at Cornell University. Norton served as president of the American Historical Association in 2018. She is a recipient of the Ambassador Book Award in American Studies for In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Norton studied a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) in the University of Michigan (1964). The next year she completed a Master of Arts (A.M.) and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in 1969 at Harvard University. Regarding her political views, she is a Democrat and religiously she considers herself a Methodist. Mary Beth Norton can be considered a pioneer of women historians not only in the United States but also in the whole world, as she was the first woman to get a job in the department of history at Cornell University.