October 11, 2023
Carlos Eire — Levitating saints raise questions that no historian should avoid. Never mind the metaphysical questions, that floating ten-ton anvil that historians dare not touch, much less acknowledge. Aside… READ MORE
August 2, 2023
Gary Dorrien— The Black social gospel tradition remains what Black historian Vincent Harding luminously called “a darkly radiant vision of America’s truth.”1 It began with Black churches that were born… READ MORE
July 20, 2023
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi— A Brief Overview of Ezra-Nehemiah My fascination with Ezra-Nehemiah was initially sparked by my teacher, mentor, and friend Kent H. Richards, whose seminar on the subject I… READ MORE
May 15, 2023
Anthony T. Kronman— My parents were intelligent atheists. They had a battery of reasons for their disbelief. But as I eventually discovered, their disdain for religion was not the product… READ MORE
May 8, 2023
This episode of our podcast features a conversation with historian R.J.M. Blackett about the 19th century newspaper editor, Congregational minister, and temperance advocate Samuel Ringgold Ward. Despite Ward’s prominent role in the… READ MORE
April 24, 2023
Mark Edmundson— Is it possible for entire societies to grow ill? Can a large population become mentally unstable? William Blake thought so. Blake, the first major English Romantic poet, diagnosed… READ MORE
April 6, 2023
Mass for Shut-Ins is the 117th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, in which Mary-Alice Daniel confronts tricontinental culture shock and her curious placement within many worlds. During… READ MORE
March 24, 2023
Sophus Helle— Enheduana is the first known author in the history of world literature. She was a royal princess and high priestess who lived in the 23rd century BCE in… READ MORE
March 20, 2023
Geoffrey S. Smith— In March of 2019 I received a text from my colleague Brent Landau, asking whether I’d be interested in sitting in on his graduate seminar down the… READ MORE
December 19, 2022
Matthew Ichihashi Potts— In the weeks after George Floyd was murdered, when people were marching and protesting in cities across the United States, a video of author and activist Kimberly Jones went… READ MORE
Our Best Books of 2023