Gustavus Adolphus College

Professor
History

Eric Carlson joined the Gustavus faculty in 1990 after teaching for three years at Denison University. He teaches the European history survey, as well as courses on medieval England, early modern England, the Reformation, the Holocaust, women in preindustrial Europe, and the family and sexuality in preindustrial Europe. He is currently developing a new course on medieval Christianity. Carlson received a BA in history from UCLA in 1976, and MA from UCLA in history (British studies) in 1978, and PhD from Harvard University in 1987. He has also been a visiting graduate student at the University of Cambridge.

Carlson has published three books: Marriage and the English Reformation (1994), 'Practical Divinity': The Works and Life of Revd Richard Greenham (with Kenneth L. Parker, 1998), and (as editor and contributor) Religion and the English People 1500-1640: New Voices/New Perspectives (1998). He also published several articles and essays on aspects of 16th and 17th century English religion, most notably the controversial "Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation, Journal of British Studies 31 (1992), "The origins, function, and status of the office of churchwarden, with particular reference to the diocese of Ely," in The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520-1725, ed. Margaret Spufford (Cambridge University Press, 1995), "The Boring of the Ear: Shaping the Pastoral Practice of Preaching in England, 1540-1640," in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Juliet Taylor (Brill, 2001) and "Good Pastors or Careless Shepherds? Parish Ministers and the English Reformation," History 88 (2003). His most recent publication is "Confession and Absolution in Caroline Cambridge: The 1637 Crisis in Context" in Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation, ed. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory, Studies in Church History 40 (2004). Carlson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1996 and served as an elected member of the North American Conference on British Studies council from 1999 to 2003. He has recently been appointed Associate Editor of the Journal of British Studies.

Eric Carlson Schedule

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