Randall J. Stephens

Randall J. Stephens is a noted author, editor, and historian of American religion.

Contents

Career

Stephens is the editor of the Journal of Southern Religion,[1] for Florida State University, and of Historically Speaking from the Johns Hopkins University Press,[2] for Boston University. He is also a member of the Polkinghorne Society at the Eastern Nazarene College[3] in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he currently teaches in the History Department.[4] Stephens has been named a Top Young Historian by the History News Network (HNN)[5][6] at George Mason University and selected as the 2008 Young Scholar of American Religion by Indiana University.[7]

Education

He received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Florida, where his dissertation explored the roots of holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South. It was selected as one of fifteen semifinalists for the Allan Nevins Prize for best dissertation in American history by the Society of American Historians. It also won the St. George Tucker Society's prize for best dissertation in Southern Studies and the University of Florida History Department’s Richard Milbauer dissertation award. Stephens also holds a Master's in Theological Studies from Nazarene Theological Seminary, a Master's in History from Emporia State University, and a bachelor's degree from Mid-America Nazarene College. [8]

Published works

Stephens is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South,[9] published by Harvard University Press.[10] This book won Stephens the Smith-Wynkoop Book Award from the Wesleyan Theological Society and was nominated for the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in addition to receiving praise from Books & Culture Magazine and The Atlantic.[7] He is currently under contract with Harvard for another book, co-authored with science-and-religion scholar Karl Giberson, titled The Anointed: American Evangelical Experts, as well as Recent Trends in Religious History, part of the "Historians in Conversation Series: Understanding the Past," with the University of South Carolina Press. He has authored chapters for volumes published by the University of Kentucky Press, Columbia University Press (the Bibliographic editor for The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History),[11] the University of South Carolina Press, Cambridge University Press, the University of Florida Press, and the University of Alabama Press. He was the editor of Tidal Wave Magazine[12] from 2001 to 2004.[5]

Notes and references

  1. ^ Journal of Southern Religion
  2. ^ Historically Speaking
  3. ^ The Polkinghorne Society
  4. ^ ENC History Department Faculty
  5. ^ a b History News Network: Roundup
  6. ^ Harvard Press Publicity: "The Young and the Restless"
  7. ^ a b "Faculty News" (PDF). The Christian Scholar. May 2009. http://www.enc.edu/downloads/alumni/christian_scholar/Spring_09.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-13. 
  8. ^ Randall Stephens' CV
  9. ^ The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South, Harvard University Press, 2007 ISBN 0674026721
  10. ^ Harvard Press & Reviews. Stephens, in fact, is the first scholar associated with the Church of the Nazarene to publish with the Harvard University Press.
  11. ^ Columbia Guide to Religion in American History
  12. ^ Tidal Wave Magazine