Elesha J. Coffman

Specialties

American intellectual history, American religion, print culture

Education

• Duke University, PhD, 2008
• Duke University, MA, 2006
• Wheaton College (IL), BA summa cum laude, 1997

Academic Interests/Current Research

I am writing a spiritual life of Margaret Mead, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

Selected Academic Publications

• The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford University Press, 2013).
• “‘I Didn’t Say That’: Margaret Mead on Nature, Nurture, and Gender in the Nuclear Age,” Modern Intellectual History (online, August 14, 2019; print forthcoming).
• “Anthropology Meets the Book of Common Prayer: Margaret Mead’s role in revising the liturgy of baptism,” Fides et Historia, 51.1 (Winter/Spring 2019), 124-134.
• “On Methodological Evangelicalism,” Fides et Historia, 51.1 (Winter/Spring 2019), 72-76.
• with Timothy D. Grundmeier, “Print Media,” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion in America, ed. John Corrigan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 113-133.
• “The Bible and the Mainline Denominations,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America, ed. Paul Gutjahr (New York: Oxford University Press, November 2017), 546-557.
• “‘You Cannot Fool the Electronic Eye’: Billy Graham and Media,” in Billy Graham: American Pilgrim, eds. Andrew Finstuen, Grant Wacker, and Anne Blue Wills (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 197-215.
• “Marketing the Mainline: The Christian Century and the Business of Ecumenism,” in Religious Periodicals and Publishing in Transnational Contexts: The Press and the Pulpit, eds. Oliver Scheiding and Anja-Maria Bassimir (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 107-124.
• “Christ and Culture and Christian Historiography,” Fides et Historia 49.1 (Winter/Spring 2017), 105-108.
• “The Measure of a Magazine: Assessing the Influence of The Christian Century,” Religion and American Culture 22.1 (Winter 2012), 53-82.
• “The Chicago Call and Responses,” in Evangelicals and the Early Church: Recovery, Reform, Renewal, eds. George Kalantzis and Andrew Tooley (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 108-124.
• “The ‘Religious Issue’ in Presidential Politics,” American Catholic Studies 119.4 (Winter 2008), 1-20.

Selected Reviews and Articles

• “Rachel Held Evans: Gone and Soon Forgotten?” Sightings, May 16, 2019.
• “Can Churches Come in from the Cold War?” (review of Paul Mojzes, ed., North American Churches and the Cold War, Eerdmans, 2018), Comment, Mar. 1, 2019.
• “Fundamentalists, Modernists, and the Rest of the Story,” (review of Geoffrey Treloar, The Disruption of Evangelicalism), Christianity Today, May 9, 2017.
• “Margaret Mead: Christian, Pro-life Feminist,” Patheos Anxious Bench, March 1, 2017.
• “Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?” Religion Dispatches, August 30, 2016.
• “Mainline Ecumenism: It’s Older Than You Think” Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice, Nov. 4, 2015.
• “Billy Graham Is Probably Not the Author of His Own ‘Final Chapter’” Religion Dispatches, Nov. 2, 2015.
• “Belief and Behavior Up, Belonging Down” Patheos Public Square, “Future of Faith in America” series, July 29, 2015.
• “How Evangelicalism Built Its Brand Loyalty” (review of Timothy Gloege, Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism) Christianity Today online, June 4, 2015.

Courses Taught at Baylor

• HIS 1300 U.S. in Global Perspective
• HIS 2366 History of the United States since 1877
• HIS 4340 Business in American History
• HIS 4395 History of American Thought, 1630-1859
• HIS 4396 History of American Thought, 1859 to Present
• HIS 5360 American Liberal Religion

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Coffman's CV