![]() ![]() Perhaps the most salient point about witch trials, students quickly come to see, is gender. I teach a college course here in Massachusetts that explores this perennially popular but frequently misinterpreted period in New England history. culture, I’ve researched and written about numerous witch trials. In my scholarship on the darker aspects of U.S. ![]() They persecuted society’s most marginal members – particularly women. ![]() Using “witch hunt” to decry purportedly baseless allegations, however, reflects a misunderstanding of American history. They are, presumably, referring to the Salem witch trials, when 19 people in 17th-century Massachusetts were executed on charges of witchcraft. When powerful men cry witch, they’re generally not talking about green-faced women wearing pointy hats. “Witch hunt” – it’s a refrain used to deride everything from impeachment inquiries and sexual assault investigations to allegations of corruption. ![]()
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