A01=Gretchen A. Adams
abolition
american south
Author_Gretchen A. Adams
authority
bigotry
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=QRYX5
christianity
civil war
colonialism
communism
control
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fanaticism
femininity
gender
historiography
history
memory
metaphor
nation
nationalism
nonfiction
persecution
political movements
politics
popular culture
power
progress
reconstruction
religion
revolution
salem witch trials
sectionalism
social norms
superstition
tituba
trauma
tyranny
union
virginia
witchcraft
Product details
- ISBN 9780226005416
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jan 2009
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In "The Specter of Salem", Gretchen A. Adams reveals the many ways that the Salem witch trials loomed over the American collective memory from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond. Schoolbooks in the 1790s, for example, evoked the episode to demonstrate the new nation's progress from a disorderly and brutal past to a rational present, while critics of new religious movements in the 1830s cast them as a return to Salem-era fanaticism, and during the Civil War southerners evoked witch burning to criticize Union tactics. Shedding new light on the many, varied American invocations of Salem, Adams ultimately illuminates the function of collective memories in the life of a nation.
Gretchen A. Adams is associate professor of history at Texas Tech University.
