A History of American Puritan Literature

Kristina Bross is Professor of English at Purdue University. A past president of the Society of Early Americanists (SEA), Kristina Bross has published articles in numerous scholarly journals and book collections on early American literature, archival studies, and pedagogy. She is the author of Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians and Colonial America (2004) and Co-editor of Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology (2008; Hilary Wyss, co-editor). Her book Future History: Global Fantasies in American and British Writings (2017) was named as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2018. Abram Van Engen is Associate Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. His articles have been published in multiple scholarly journals, as well as Avidly, Comment Magazine, Common-place, The Conversation, Humanities Magazine, Religion and Politics, Salon.com, and other venues. In 2012, he won the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History. He is the author of Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow-Feeling in Early New England (2015) and City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (2020). His research and writing have won a Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as a Faculty Fellowship and a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

• Introduction Kristina Bross and Abram Van Engen; Prologue. Pilgrims, puritans, and the origin of America Abram Van Engen; Part I. Places: 1. Native America Drew Lopenzina; 2. British Isles David D. Hall; 3. Europe Jan Stievermann; 4. Colonial North America Evan Haefeli; 5. Caribbean Kristina Bross; 6. Global America Michelle Burnham; Part II. Approaches: 7. Theology Lisa M. Gordis; 8. Aesthetics Joanne van der Woude; 9. Gender Tamara Harvey; 10. Race Cassander L. Smith; 11. Print culture Jonathan Beecher Field; 12. Ritual Matthew P. Brown; 13. Manuscript culture Meredith Marie Neuman; 14. Environment Timothy Sweet; 15. Science Ralph Bauer; 16. Millennialism Christopher Trigg; 17. Postsecularism Bryce Traister; Afterword. The puritan imaginary and the puritans' world Abram Van Engen.

'Teachers of early American literature will likely find their own approaches to Puritan literature benefit from the straightforward, substantial, and lucid essays … Highly recommended.' G. D. MacDonald, Choice