Dr. Isaac Stephens is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Mississippi.
Research Interests
Dr. Isaac Stephens is a historian of early modern British/European history, and he has a particular interest in the interplay between religion, politics, gender, and culture during the Stuart period. Elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2017, he has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the William Andrews Clark Library, and Vanderbilt University. His publications include articles in the Journal of British Studies and The Historical Journal.
Currently, Stephens' research centers on producing two books. Tentatively titled Smiting Shepherds: Clerical Ejections and Popular Politics in London, 1640-1662, one examines mass ejections of clergy from parish livings in England's cultural and political hub during the British Civil Wars, the English Revolution, the Ininterregnum, and the Restoration. These purges throw into sharp relief early modern confessional conflicts that shaped London, if not all of Britain. Iinvestigating the mass ejections demonstrates how ordinary Londoners found ways to influence parochial and national politics, and such research expands our understanding of the public sphere, popular politics, persecution, martyrdom, the English state, the city of London, and religious disputes in the seventeenth century.
Stephens' other project explores the life of the moderate puritan, Edward Reynolds, who stood as bishop of Norwich in the Church of England from 1661 to 1676. Born in 1599, Reynolds intimately experienced the religion-political oscillation of the seventeenth century during his career that included holding livings in Northamptonshire and London, sitting as a Presbyterian member of the Westminster Assembly, and serving as royal chaplain to Charles II before becoming a bishop. Examining his career provides fresh perspective on England's so-called Long Reformation, as his life spanned years that included the Jacobean "Calvinist Consensus," the Personal Rule, the tumults of the 1640s and 1650s, and the consequences of Stuart monarchy's return in 1660.
His areas of specialization are:
- Religion and politics of the Stuart period
- London during the British Civil Wars and English Revolution
- Interplay between parochial, municipal, and state politics
- The complexities and ambiguities of early modern English Protestantism
- The early modern public sphere
Biography
Dr. Isaac Stephens earned his MA and PhD from UC-Riverside. Before joining UM's Department of History in 2018, Stephens taught at Vanderbilt University, Dalhousie University, Appalachian State University, Auburn University, and Saginaw Valley State University. Combined with his research, such experience makes him well suited to offer both undergraduate and graduate instruction/advisement in historical methods and the history of early modern Britain, Europe, and the globe.
Publications
Patriarchy, Piety, and Singlehood in Early Stuart England
From the publisher:
A microhistory of a never-married English gentlewoman named Elizabeth Isham, this book centres on an extremely rare piece of women's writing - a recently discovered 60,000-word spiritual autobiography held in Princeton's manuscript collections that she penned around 1639. The autobiography is unmatched in providing an inside view of her family relations, her religious beliefs, her reading habits and, most sensationally, the reasons why she chose never to marry despite desires to the contrary held by her male kin, particularly Sir John Isham, her father. Based on the autobiography, combined with extensive research of the Isham family papers now housed at the county record office in Northampton, this book restores our historical memory of Elizabeth and her female relations, expanding our understanding and knowledge about patriarchy, piety and singlehood in early modern England.
Selected Book(s):
Co-Authored with Peter Lake, Scandal and Religious Identity in Early Stuart England: A Northamptonshire Maid’s Tragedy (Boydell Press, 2015).
Selected Article(s):
"'Man of Moderation': The Restoration Bishop of Norwich," in William J. Bulman and Freddy Dominguez, eds., Political and Religious Practice in the Early Modern British World (Manchester University Press, 2022), 138-57.
Courses Taught
- HIST 1200 Introduction to European History to 1648
- HIST 1210 Introduction to European History Since 1648
- HIST 3000 Historical Methods
- HIST 3160 Martyrs of the English Reformation
- HIST 3200 Tudor-Stuart Britain & Ireland,1485-1688
- HIST 3210 Tudor England, 1485-1603
- HIST 3370 History of London
- HIST 6510 Readings in European History to 1815
- HIST 6810 Readings in Early Modern British History
Education
M.A. History, University of California-Riverside (2003)
Ph.D. History, University of California-Riverside (2008)