Abram Van Engen

Abram Van Engen’s research and teaching interests include American exceptionalism, early American literature and culture, Puritanism, sentimentalism, and religion. His first book, Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England (Oxford University Press, 2015), reveals a Calvinist theology of sympathy that shaped the culture of early New England, affecting definitions of English identity, conceptions of community, relations with Native Americans, and the development of American literature. His current book project traces a history of John Winthrop's "city on a hill" sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, from 1630 to the present day.