Students in this area may specialize in any aspect of the history of Christianity broadly conceived including theology and religious thought, devotional practices and expressions, institutions and movements, social and cultural contexts, and lived religion. Students are expected to develop critical skills of documentary, artifactual and ethnographical interpretation, to develop methodological expertise appropriate for their chosen topic, and to familiarize themselves with the history of interpretive and historiographical traditions in their field. Although projects on all aspects of the history of Christianity are welcomed, the faculty has particular strengths in late antique, medieval, European, transatlantic, Caribbean, and American Christianity. Within those periods and locations there is particular expertise in the history of mysticism and enthusiasm, ethics and religious thought, race, gender and sexuality, radical, liberal, and evangelical expressions of Christianity, and African American Christianity and media culture. Students working on the history of American Christianity are expected to attend the bimonthly North American Religions Colloquium.
Recent Dissertations
- The Cult of the Saints and its Christological Foundations in Eustratios of Constantinople’s De statu animarum post mortem
- The ‘Eternal Return’ of the Byzantine Icon: Sacred and Secular in the Painting of Photis Kontoglou
- Sainte-Anne-du-Petit-Cap: The Making of an Early Modern Shrine
- No Closure: Catholic Practice and Boston’s Parish Shutdowns
- Protestant Sainthood: Martyrdom, Apocalypticism, and the Meaning of Sanctity in Early New England Failed Pygmalions: The Conversion and “Apostasy” of Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan, Seventeenth-Century Montagnais Indian
- God-talk in the Yard: Religion in the Nineteenth Century Harvard College Curriculum
- The Irish and the Incarnation: Images of Christ in the Old Irish Poems of Blathmac
- Traditionary Religion: The Great Awakening and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Southern New England, 1736-1776
- The Map of the Cosmos and the Ascent of the Soul: Synderesis, Weight, and the Affect in the Thought of Bonaventure
- Heaven in a Bottle: Franciscan Apocalypticism and the Elixir, 1250–1360
- The Vital Landscape: Evangelicalism and the Culture of Nature in America, 1790-1870
Affiliated Faculty
Catherine Brekus
Chair, Committee on the Study of Religion (on leave, 2025-2026)cbrekus@hds.harvard.edu
Ann. D. Braude
Senior Lecturer on American Religious History and Director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Programabraude@hds.harvard.edu
Luis M. Girón-Negrón
Interim Chair 2025-2026, Committee on the Study of Religiongiron@fas.harvard.edu
Terrence L. Johnson
Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies (HDS), Professor of African American Studies (FAS), Director of Religion and Public Life tjohnson@hds.harvard.edu
Dan McKanan
Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinitydmckanan@hds.harvard.edu
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity areed@hds.harvard.edu
Raúl Zegarra
Assistant Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies
Matthew Ichihashi Potts
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church