Graduate studies

A wide-ranging group of scholars, representing African, American, European, Middle Eastern, and world history, are currently working on the history of religion. The Department boasts strengths in late antique/medieval religious history and early modern (including Atlantic) history. UF historians have secured major grants both for individual projects and collaborative programs such as Faithful Narratives:The Challenge of Religion in History (Sept 08-Dec 09).

Sarajevo Haggadah (14th Century)

Faculty and graduate students at UF collaborate with scholars of religion working in other disciplines. The Department has strong affiliations with both the Department of Religion and interdisciplinary centers such as Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS), the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for African Studies.

Graduate students studying the history of religion work within a specific degree-granting section (American, African, European, Latin American, or History of Science) but may take advantage of seminars and faculty in other sections to build a minor field in religious history.

Faculty

Juliana Barr (early America, borderlands, women & religion in the Spanish southwest)

Michelle Campos (modern Middle East)

Nina Caputo (Jews & Christians in the Middle Ages; medieval Jewish history & culture)

Florin Curta (medieval archeology and material aspects of conversion)

Bonnie Effros (late antique and early medieval gender and spirituality; ritual practice and conversion)

Alice Freifeld (Jewish studies)

Fred Gregory (science and religion in 18th-19th century central Europe)

Jessica Harland-Jacobs (religion in the British Empire)

Mitchell Hart (modern Jewish history)

Howard Louthan (Reformation; late medieval to early modern religion & culture)

Sue O’Brien (Islam in Africa)

Jon Sensbach (early America, African-American religion, religious awakenings in the early South and Atlantic world)

Andrea Sterk (ancient & medieval Christianity; mission & Christianization, east & west)

Burning of Jan Hus at the stake,
Diebold Schilling, Spiezer Chronik (1485)

Resources

Smathers Library at the University of Florida houses a solid collection of Latin and Greek patristic writings; rare book collection with a strength in early modern religion; the country's premier Latin American and Caribbean history collection; and an outstanding Judaica collection (particularly for Central and East European Jewry).

Graduate students take full advantage of the programs and resources of the following centers:

Moravian missionaries in the Caribbean

Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Recent seminars

Recently Taught Graduate Seminars
Late Antiquity: From Pagan Rome to Christian Europe
Conversion in the Middle Ages
Christianity 200-800
Heresy in Premodern Europe
Holy War
Reformation Europe
Readings in Early Modern Europe
The Black Atlantic
Religion in Africa and the World
Religion and Empire (Sp 09)

Undergraduate Courses with Graduate Sections
History of Christianity
Jewish History, 711-1492
“New Rome”: Church & Culture in the Byzantine Empire
Islam in African History
Religion and Empire

Center for African Studies

Center for European Studies

Center for Jewish Studies

Latin American Studies

Medieval & Early Modern Studies

Oral History Program

Paris Research Center

Center for Women's Studies and Gender

Current graduate students