In 2003, I graduated from Calvin College (now Calvin University) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I entered Northwestern University and received my Ph.D. in English in 2010. From there, I took my first job at Trinity University in San Antonio. My last move was to Washington University in St. Louis in 2012.

I began my academic career with a study of sympathy in seventeenth-century Puritanism, drawing together abiding interests in the history of emotions, theology, imagined communities, and literary form. Those interests led to my first book, Sympathetic Puritans, and several related articles on early American religion and literature.

After writing about the Puritans in their own place and context, I became interested in the way Pilgrims and Puritans were remembered, re-used, and remade by later generations. Studying the life of texts and the effects of collective memory, I produced a second book, City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism, along with several publications that together study the creation and curation of American exceptionalism.

Research for my second project expanded rapidly through my participation in the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis, where I led a team studying the concept and creation of American exceptionalism. Together we built the City on a Hill Archive, which tracks a history of the phrase “city on a hill” and its many meanings and applications in American culture. That work initiated another digital project, Exploring Anthologies of Early American Literature, which analyzes how editions of major anthologies have changed over time.

At the HDW, we work in teams with undergraduate and graduate researchers. I very much enjoy collaboration, and I have found it essential to all my work—with co-edited books, a co-edited journal issue, co-written articles, co-taught courses, and several writing and research groups that bring together literature, history, religion, politics, and psychology.

My undergraduate courses have included Literature, Spirituality, and Religion (a freshman seminar); Early Texts and Contexts (a general survey); American Literature to 1865 (another survey); Natives and Newcomers in Early America (upper-level special topics course); City on a Hill (for American Culture Studies); and Morality and Markets (a Beyond Boundaries course co-taught with the Business School). Graduate seminars have included Puritanism, Literature and Religion, Intro to Graduate Studies, and Marilynne Robinson.