From Salem to Sri Lanka: Learning to Follow a Lead

Working as Mary Beth Norton’s research assistant and then writing a senior thesis under her direction on the Salem witchcraft trials at Cornell University in the 1990s introduced me to the joys of archival research and historical analysis. My interests have since taken me far and wide, but in my pursuit of a global perspective on the early Americas, my foundation has been the skills I first learned under her direction: how to follow a lead, how to integrate primary source discoveries with secondary literature, and the importance of striving for precision in argument, exposition and use of evidence. My own work on imperial practice, commodity trades and human and natural resource exploitation in the early modern Atlantic world is indebted to the example of archival sleuthing she set, as well as her love of a good story. While I did not end up a women’s historian, I am indeed a woman and a historian, and she played a transformational role in my development as person and professional.