https://www.abramvanengen.com/a-history-of-american-puritan-literature daily 0.75 2020-12-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599059430897-QTQN7UOBAKSABDYLNQU9/CUP+cover-+Cropped+%283%29.jpg A History of American Puritan Literature For generations, scholars have imagined American puritans as religious enthusiasts, fleeing persecution, finding refuge in Massachusetts, and founding 'America'. The puritans have been read as a product of New England and the origin of American exceptionalism. This History challenges the usual understanding of American puritans, offering new ways of reading their history and their literary culture. Together, an international team of authors make clear that puritan America cannot be thought of apart from Native America, and that its literature is also grounded in Britain, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and networks that spanned the globe. Each chapter focuses on a single place, method, idea, or context to read familiar texts anew and to introduce forgotten or neglected voices and writings. A History of American Puritan Literature is a collaborative effort to create not a singular literary history, but a series of interlocked new histories of American puritan literature. https://www.abramvanengen.com/about-1 daily 0.75 2020-09-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599016208739-J9CSFCBMPVHDGN58WKXT/151123_jaa_abram_van_engen_0035.jpg Bio https://www.abramvanengen.com/digital-humanities-projects daily 0.75 2024-08-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598545529732-BTIVVDCVKTL680XLPFM7/Abram+City+on+a+Hill.jpg DH Projects - The City on a Hill Archive The City on a Hill project tracks every use of the phrase “city on a hill” and its variants from 1600 to the present in order to find out what this phrase means, in what context it most often appears, when it begins referring to America, and what kind of America it identifies. It’s part of the WashU Humanities Digital Workshop, which is a research workshop comprised of Humanities professors applying computational tools and methods to traditional humanities research projects. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598546294492-79SG49JD0VL2WQIUGUPW/generic+early+american+picture.jpg DH Projects - Exploring Anthologies of Early American Literature As a relatively recent field of study, early American literature has seen its canonical outlines increase exponentially in the last several decades. With the publication of the first Norton Anthology of American Literature in 1979, the first attempts were made to define the content of this growing field. As the Norton anthologies continued to expand over the coming years, they found healthy competition from the Heath Anthologies of American Literature, which offered a more expansive interpretation of anthologized content. Both anthologies tell a story—in fact, multiple stories—of the developing field of early American literature, stories which often only come into view once the data has been gathered, sorted, and displayed https://www.abramvanengen.com/sample-courses daily 0.75 2024-08-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599581802438-6I2RKGJLR20FZ8HVCOGC/IMG_2871.PNG Sample Courses https://www.abramvanengen.com/writings-related-to-academic-work daily 0.75 2024-08-28 https://www.abramvanengen.com/home daily 1.0 2024-08-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598467685181-O4YK5M29JEV37SPULMSE/Abram+Site+Picture.jpg Home Abram Van Engen is Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the English Department, and Professor of Religion and Politics (by courtesy) at Washington University in St. Louis. Van Engen has published widely on religion and literature, focusing especially on seventeenth-century Puritans and the way they have been remembered and remade in American culture. His forthcoming book, Word Made Fresh, introduces reading poetry as a spiritual practice. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1dddc522-73fb-4cd1-bf06-888687346bda/Cover+of+Word+Made+Fresh.jpeg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598469464253-TRTG926R7QMZ0K70WTQU/City+on+a+Hill+2.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599422883613-2LQ2T53VZT3WT6V7IFWD/IMG_2714+2.PNG Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/aeb6bc74-9e09-43c6-8146-92884a6d2620/a+rich+life+jpg.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598558072691-MARC7DGA9VDGHIG5G9YJ/TheCarverProject_Logo_CMYK.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599754733063-AXA1230LA1QE4EFREB84/Danforth+Center+Image.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599759279845-U38ST56XMB1CN3HY125A/AMCS+logo.png Home https://www.abramvanengen.com/city-on-a-hill daily 0.75 2020-12-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598633507538-ZU4VSX2SSUPNHBVRLMYH/City+on+a+Hill+2.jpg City on a Hill A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day In this illuminating book, Abram C. Van Engen shows how the phrase “city on a hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthrop’s speech, its changing status through time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and other often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon and its eventual transformation into an American tale. This sermon’s rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how they continue to influence competing visions of the country—the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599444985549-58QF15TQY4URSBPIT97I/IMG_2873.PNG City on a Hill - A talk for the Massachusetts Historical Society. https://www.abramvanengen.com/sympathetic-puritans daily 0.75 2020-12-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599148193157-178I1U614QGM0U3FVRCJ/VanEngen_SympatheticPuritans_book+cover-1.jpg Sympathetic Puritans Revising dominant accounts of Puritanism and challenging the literary history of sentimentalism, Sympathetic Puritans argues that a Calvinist theology of sympathy shaped the politics, religion, rhetoric, and literature of early New England. Scholars have often understood and presented sentimentalism as a direct challenge to stern and stoic Puritan forebears; the standard history traces a cult of sensibility back to moral sense philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment, not Puritan New England. Abram C. Van Engen has unearthed pervasive evidence of sympathy in a large archive of Puritan sermons, treatises, tracts, poems, journals, histories, and captivity narratives. He demonstrates how two types of sympathy -- the active command to fellow-feel (a duty), as well as the passive sign that could indicate salvation (a discovery) -- permeated Puritan society and came to define the very boundaries of English culture, affecting conceptions of community, relations with Native Americans, and the development of American literature. Van Engen re-examines the Antinomian Controversy, conversion narratives, transatlantic relations, Puritan missions, Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative -- and Puritan culture more generally -- through the lens of sympathy. Demonstrating and explicating a Calvinist theology of sympathy in seventeenth-century New England, the book reveals the religious history of a concept that has previously been associated with more secular roots. https://www.abramvanengen.com/teaching-statement daily 0.75 2024-08-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599427462142-YI2QI4K00FUIZSW30NVE/IMG_2870.jpg Teaching Statement https://www.abramvanengen.com/van-engen-cv daily 0.75 2024-04-15 https://www.abramvanengen.com/podcast daily 0.75 2024-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/d55df97b-00b0-4293-b95a-85154206dee8/poetry+for+all.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/d2388216-ab2c-4f8c-93c7-9a01e6f5cc8e/abram.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/d8707fe9-bb84-45d5-923b-600ebade6af2/Diaz.jpg https://www.abramvanengen.com/books daily 0.75 2024-06-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1dddc522-73fb-4cd1-bf06-888687346bda/Cover+of+Word+Made+Fresh.jpeg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1598633507538-ZU4VSX2SSUPNHBVRLMYH/City+on+a+Hill+2.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599148251370-ET3CQ7ZF6AJH778CGY6L/VanEngen_SympatheticPuritans_book+cover-1.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1599059430897-QTQN7UOBAKSABDYLNQU9/CUP+cover-+Cropped+%283%29.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1608070189301-RJMEFF5Q77BAF8CSVEG7/Cover+Image.jpg https://www.abramvanengen.com/feeling-godly daily 0.75 2020-12-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/1608067527312-YVQV1CL0L4XNCL8VJM0P/Cover+Image.jpg Feeling Godly In 1746, Jonathan Edwards described his philosophy on the process of Christian conversion in A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. For Edwards, a strict Congregationalist, true conversion is accompanied by a new heart and yields humility, forgiveness, and love—affections that work a change in the person's nature. But, how did other early American communities understand religious affections and come to recognize their manifestation? Feeling Godly brings together well-known and highly regarded scholars of early American history and literature, Native American studies, African American history, and religious studies to investigate the shape, feel, look, theology, and influence of religious affections in early American sites of contact with and between Christians. While remaining focused on the question of religious affections, these essays span a wide range of early North American cultures, affiliations, practices, and devotions, and enable a comparative approach that draws together a history of emotions with a history of religion. In addition to the volume editors, this collection includes essays from Joanna Brooks, Kathleen Donegan, Melissa Frost, Stephanie Kirk, Jon Sensbach, Scott Manning Stevens, and Mark Valeri, with an afterword by Barbara H. Rosenwein. https://www.abramvanengen.com/substack daily 0.75 2024-05-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/aeb6bc74-9e09-43c6-8146-92884a6d2620/a+rich+life+jpg.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/d2388216-ab2c-4f8c-93c7-9a01e6f5cc8e/abram.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/96c3957c-8a1c-4573-a728-a8d080342537/boumgarden.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f46a7f79c5a2253c9cb1fc3/186066d3-07b1-4235-90ac-5b6d0d0df656/van+tongeren.jpg https://www.abramvanengen.com/speaking daily 0.75 2024-08-28