Belief and Inquiry in Nineteenth-Century America

This MA seminar examines how Americans in the nineteenth century understood and negotiated the relationship between religious belief and scientific inquiry. Moving beyond a simple dichotomy, the course explores intersections between religion and science, and the ways they reinforced one another in political and social contexts. The seminar engages major historiographical debates addressing secularization, religious and political authority, and knowledge production. Topics include the Second Great Awakening; natural theology and geology; the reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species in the United States; and religious belief in a redemptive science. Students will read and analyze primary sources in the history of science, intellectual history, and religion. They will also evaluate secondary sources and assess how scholarship on these themes has evolved. Seminar work emphasizes close reading, historiographical discussion, the development of independent research questions, and the academic writing process.