Description
It is well known that the first puritan settlers in North America cultivated expertise in Hebrew and Jewish literature, embedding it into their universities, politics, and governance. Far from a neutral or innocently academic pursuit, this paper argues that ‘Christian Hebraism’ served a crucial theological purpose: to ensure that future generations of colonists would be remade in their forefathers’ confessional image. Furthermore, this was not a purpose limited to elite scholars or theologians: rather, the assumptions and priorities that structured Christian Hebraism were widely diffused across early American culture and society. From this perspective, Christian Hebraism was not a hobby practised by a few eccentric specialists, but rather a core technology of colonialism, shaping libraries, literature, and even attitudes to Indigenous peoples. This paper proposes a new category for the earliest puritans—that of the scholar-settler—to capture how erudition and colonization worked hand in hand in colonial America.
About the Speaker
Kirsten Macfarlane is currently Associate Professor of Early Modern Religious and Intellectual History at the University of Chicago, where her teaching and research focus on the history of Western Europe and North America from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Prior to joining the University of Chicago she served as associate professor at the University of Oxford, where she also received her BA, MSt, and DPhil. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from Trinity College, Cambridge; the Houghton Library, Harvard; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study; KU Leuven; Lund University; and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Her first two books were published with Oxford University Press in 2021 and 2024 and her third monograph, entitled ‘American Hebraism 1640-1800’, is under advance contract with Harvard University Press.
About the British Studies Seminar Series
The British Studies Seminar brings together scholars to discuss work that addresses the history of Britain and the British Empire from the early modern period to present day. The seminar is co-sponsored by the Graduate Cluster in British Studies at Northwestern, Northwestern History, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies at the University of Chicago.
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