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Mary Beth Norton
Mary Beth Norton (born 1943) 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. The first woman to join the department of history at Cornell University, Norton is a pioneer of women historians not only in the United States but also in the world.
Norton received her Bachelor of Arts (B. A.) at the University of Michigan (1964). The next year she completed a Master of Arts (M. A.), going on to receive her Ph.D. in 1969 at Harvard 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. She identifies as a Democrat and she considers herself a Methodist.
Mary Beth Norton was born on March 25, 1943, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her father, Clark Frederic Norton, was a political science professor, a legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, and an employee of the Congressional Research Service. Her mother, Mary Norton (her maiden name was Lunny), was also a professor. Her parents played a special role when encouraging her to study. In 1948, they left Ann Arbor and moved to Greencastle, a city in Indiana where both parents taught at DePauw University. Her father was a political science professor, and her mother taught Latin. She and her family were very tied to the academic year and to DePauw.
As a child, Norton was very interested in reading. At a very young age, she began reading the adult section books at the Greencastle public library, having read all the ones in the children's section. This is one reason she took her first after-school job at the DePauw University library, making sure all the books were correctly organized. During her high school years, Norton felt she did not fit with the rest of her classmates, as she was the only student interested in books and history. When she reached college, at the University of Michigan, she met many other people with the same interests and got involved in national and campus politics.
In 1960, she campaigned for John F. Kennedy with the youth wing of the Democratic Party. She was part of the student group that welcomed Kennedy on a visit to Michigan, where he first came up with the idea of the Peace Corps. Thanks to the students' support in Ann Arbor, Kennedy decided to make the Peace Corps one of his priorities during his campaign for the U.S. presidency.
During her years at the University of Michigan, she held a seat on the Michigan Student Government Council, went to many congresses of the National Student Association (NSA) as a delegate, where she took part actively in the politics around the civil rights movement. The first time she experienced sex discrimination for being a woman was during her participation in the NSA, where male members would not allow her or other women to take leadership roles.
When applying for the Woodrow Wilson fellowship for graduate school, she was told by the professor at Michigan responsible for the applications that girls did not have many chances to obtain that fellowship. However, she decided to apply both to the Wilson and the Fulbright fellowships (the only two offered to women at that time) in the face of sex discrimination. She obtained the Wilson fellowship, which brought a year of study in addition to the four years offered her by Harvard. She did much of her Ph.D. research in England, and in 1970 her work won the Allan Nevins prize from the Society of American Historians for the best-written dissertation. Two years later, it was published as The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774-1789 by Little, Brown and Company.
Subsequently, she was offered a job at the University of Connecticut as an assistant professor of history, a turning point in her career. She spent two years there and got to know Tom Paterson, with whom she would later coauthor a new U.S. history textbook, the two-volume A People & A Nation, currently in its 11th edition. After learning of the Nevins prize, and reading Norton ́s Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University (New York) offered her a job as an assistant professor of history, becoming the first woman in Cornell ́s history department.
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Mary Beth Norton
Mary Beth Norton (born 1943) 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. The first woman to join the department of history at Cornell University, Norton is a pioneer of women historians not only in the United States but also in the world.
Norton received her Bachelor of Arts (B. A.) at the University of Michigan (1964). The next year she completed a Master of Arts (M. A.), going on to receive her Ph.D. in 1969 at Harvard 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. She identifies as a Democrat and she considers herself a Methodist.
Mary Beth Norton was born on March 25, 1943, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her father, Clark Frederic Norton, was a political science professor, a legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, and an employee of the Congressional Research Service. Her mother, Mary Norton (her maiden name was Lunny), was also a professor. Her parents played a special role when encouraging her to study. In 1948, they left Ann Arbor and moved to Greencastle, a city in Indiana where both parents taught at DePauw University. Her father was a political science professor, and her mother taught Latin. She and her family were very tied to the academic year and to DePauw.
As a child, Norton was very interested in reading. At a very young age, she began reading the adult section books at the Greencastle public library, having read all the ones in the children's section. This is one reason she took her first after-school job at the DePauw University library, making sure all the books were correctly organized. During her high school years, Norton felt she did not fit with the rest of her classmates, as she was the only student interested in books and history. When she reached college, at the University of Michigan, she met many other people with the same interests and got involved in national and campus politics.
In 1960, she campaigned for John F. Kennedy with the youth wing of the Democratic Party. She was part of the student group that welcomed Kennedy on a visit to Michigan, where he first came up with the idea of the Peace Corps. Thanks to the students' support in Ann Arbor, Kennedy decided to make the Peace Corps one of his priorities during his campaign for the U.S. presidency.
During her years at the University of Michigan, she held a seat on the Michigan Student Government Council, went to many congresses of the National Student Association (NSA) as a delegate, where she took part actively in the politics around the civil rights movement. The first time she experienced sex discrimination for being a woman was during her participation in the NSA, where male members would not allow her or other women to take leadership roles.
When applying for the Woodrow Wilson fellowship for graduate school, she was told by the professor at Michigan responsible for the applications that girls did not have many chances to obtain that fellowship. However, she decided to apply both to the Wilson and the Fulbright fellowships (the only two offered to women at that time) in the face of sex discrimination. She obtained the Wilson fellowship, which brought a year of study in addition to the four years offered her by Harvard. She did much of her Ph.D. research in England, and in 1970 her work won the Allan Nevins prize from the Society of American Historians for the best-written dissertation. Two years later, it was published as The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774-1789 by Little, Brown and Company.
Subsequently, she was offered a job at the University of Connecticut as an assistant professor of history, a turning point in her career. She spent two years there and got to know Tom Paterson, with whom she would later coauthor a new U.S. history textbook, the two-volume A People & A Nation, currently in its 11th edition. After learning of the Nevins prize, and reading Norton ́s Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University (New York) offered her a job as an assistant professor of history, becoming the first woman in Cornell ́s history department.