The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem

This week you will be reading a chapter from After the Fact called, The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem. It focuses on the growing pains that many communities in the colonies were facing (they were no longer the same as when they were founded), and in the case of Salem these tensions exploded into the violent persecution of witches.

In this chapter the authors of the book want to address:  how do changes in science/knowledge (like the develop of Psychiatry) change historian’s understanding of the past?

PLEASE SEE THE CHAPTER IN THE ATTACHED PDF. It will be below the questions that you will answer after reading the chapter

So first you need to read chapter 3, and then answer the following 3 questions:

1. What started the hysteria? Who was involved and affected by the events that followed the initial accusations?
2. What were the pros and cons of pleading guilty to witchcraft?
3. What aspect of the Salem witch trials did Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum study? What were their findings, and how did this affect the interpretation of the events in Salem?

Each answer should be a few paragraphs long and fully answer all parts of the question.