The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England

Dr. Carol F. Karlsen is an American historian specializing in women’s history and the early American era. She received her BA from the University of Maryland in 1970. She went on to get her MA at New York University and PhD at Yale in 1972 and 1980, respectively. Karlsen taught history at Bard College from 1982-85 before joining the history department at the University of Michigan. She taught there until her retirement in 2011. Karlsen was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for exceptional scholarship in 1989.

Karlsen dedicated her career to researching and teaching on early American culture, social history women’s studies, and witchcraft. After editing a book about the journals of Esther Edwards Burr, the mother of American revolutionary and politician Aaron Burr, she published The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England in 1987. In 2005, she advanced her studies into New England witchcraft by publishing another book, The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A History in Documents. Throughout her career, Karlsen also wrote about New England witchcraft in various encyclopedias, academic journals, textbooks, and book reviews.

Dr. Karlsen’s career positions her as a leading authority on witchcraft in early America. Her background also enlightens why The Devil in the Shape of a Woman is still considered a landmark work in the historical study of American witchcraft. Karlsen’s rich familiarity with the early American era, its social structure, and the religious beliefs of the time lend to deep, complex analyses of the sources cited in her research. Further, her multi-disciplinary experience spanning history, women’s studies, and social research differs her work from other historians who had tackled the topic before her. Such experience allowed Karlsen to vary her methodology and incorporate anthropology, sociology, and economics into her analysis of 17th-century New England. This provided a framework around her research that produced conclusive findings distinct from the other arguments made by previous historians. As a result, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman permanently shifted how scholars view and interpret the history of witchcraft in 17th-century New England.