New Books Network

About Ryan Shelton

Ryan David Shelton (@ryoldfashioned) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.

Ryan David Shelton (@ryoldfashioned) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.

NBN Episodes hosted by Ryan:

Biography December 23, 2021

The Strange Genius of Mr. O.

The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity

Carolyn Eastman

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The Strange Genius of Mr. O.: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2021) by Carolyn …
Christian Studies December 13, 2021

When Did Eve Sin?

The Fall and Biblical Historiography

Jeffrey J. Niehaus

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
There's a small discrepancy between the divine proscription against forbidden fruit in Genesis 2 and Eve's re-telling of that prohibition to the serpent in Genesis 3. Jeffrey J. Niehaus, senior …
General History December 7, 2021

The Library

A Fragile History

Andrew Pettegree and Arthur Der Weduwen

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags …
Early Modern History July 27, 2021

The Bookshop of the World

Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
After a turbulent political revolt against the military superpower of the early modern world, the tiny Dutch Republic managed to situate itself as the dominant printing and book trading power …
General History July 27, 2021

The Culture of Dissent in Restoration England

The Wonders of the Lord

George Southcombe

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
After over a decade of king-less government, civil war, and political and religious revolution, the restoration of the Stuart monarchy created a complex situation for those religious dissenters who had enjoyed …
Irish Studies July 23, 2021

Derry City

Memory and Political Struggle in Northern Ireland

Margo Shea

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The city that sits on the River Foyle on the North side of the Irish isle in many ways has stood as a microcosm of the conflicts in Northern Ireland …
American Studies June 14, 2021

The Trials of Thomas Morton

An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

Peter C. Mancall

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Every good story needs a villain, and some of the early chroniclers of the pilgrim and puritan settlements found all they needed for this type of character in Thomas Morton. Peter …
American Studies June 11, 2021

A History of American Puritan Literature

Kristina Bross and Abram Van Engen

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
A new approach to puritan studies has been emerging in recent decades, but until now, no single volume has tried to gather in a comprehensive way the new histories of this literature …
Christian Studies June 8, 2021

Shaping the Stranger Churches

Migrants in England and the Troubles in the Netherlands, 1547–1585

Silke Muylaert

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
During the mid-sixteenth century, English reformers invited a group of continental Protestant refugees to London and surrounding provinces. The ecclesiastical authorities allowed them liberty to establish their own churches with relatively little …
Literary Studies June 2, 2021

When Novels Were Books

Jordan Alexander Stein

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
For most of the eighteenth century, the format, size, and price of the earliest novels meant that they would have been sold and bought alongside Protestant religious texts. In When Novels Were …
Christian Studies May 24, 2021

Hot Protestants

A History of Puritanism in England and America

Michael P. Winship

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The English Reformation started in the middle of the sixteenth century, and right away there were more zealous reformers who were not satisfied with the changes made in the English church …
Christian Studies May 21, 2021

Calvin and the Resignification of the World

Creation, Incarnation, and the Problem of Political Theology in the 1559 'Institutes'

Michelle Chaplin Sanchez

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
John Calvin's 1559 Institutes takes the reader on a journey that ends not in the celestial city but rather an ordinary, terrestrial city with all the attendant political and social secular …
Media May 6, 2021

Twitter

A Biography

Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
As Twitter enters its own adolescence, both the users and the creators of this famous social media platform find themselves engaging with a tool that certainly could not have been imagined at …
American Studies May 6, 2021

The Common School Awakening

Religion and the Transatlantic Roots of American Public Education

David Komline

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The origins of American public schools can help shed light on continued contemporary discussions around religion and education in American discourse. In The Common School Awakening: Religion and the Transatlantic Roots of American …
Christian Studies May 5, 2021

Who Is an Evangelical?

Thomas S. Kidd

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
News and media outlets have become especially attentive to the political leanings of a particular subset of American Protestants: the Evangelicals. Leading historian of American Christianity, Thomas S. Kidd, wrote Who …
Christian Studies April 9, 2021

Glimpses of the New Creation

Worship and the Formative Power of the Arts

W. David O. Taylor and Jeremy Begbie

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Churches have long sought the arts as a vehicle to communicate divine transcendence and to form worshipers. In Glimpses of the New Creation: Worship and the Formative Power of the Arts (Eerdmans, 2019) …
Christian Studies April 8, 2021

Singing the Congregation

How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community

Monique M. Ingalls

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The choices that churches make about their musical style do more than simply change the sounds one hears in their gatherings, but actually form certain kinds of community. So Monique …
Christian Studies March 29, 2021

Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America

Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest

Crawford Gribben

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
In America's Pacific Northwest a group of conservative Protestants have been conducting a new experiment in cultural transformation. Dissatisfied with what they see as the clumsy political engagement and vapid literary …
Christian Studies March 22, 2021

Quakers, Christ, and the Enlightenment

Madeline Pennington

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Histories of seventeenth-century Quakerism have far too often emphasized social and political factors as the agents of development and change. While the Quakers were not in a vacuum and persecution …
Christian Studies March 19, 2021

God’s Law and Order

Aaron Griffith

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The rise of Neo-Evangelicalism as a social and political American movement accompanied shifting attitudes in broader American criminal justice policies. Religious leaders from Billy Graham to David Wilkerson found growing …
American Studies March 19, 2021

American Literature and the New Puritan Studies

Bryce Traister

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
Bryce Traister has edited a collection of 13 original essays exploring the shifting landscape in the historiography of American Puritanism in American Literature and the New Puritan Studies (Cambridge UP, 2017) …
General History March 15, 2021

Saint Patrick Retold

The Legend and History of Ireland's Patron Saint

Roy Flechner

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The only surviving contemporary texts that provide insight into the life of Saint Patrick were both written by the legendary patron saint of Ireland. By Patrick's own account, his life …
Christian Studies March 12, 2021

A Christian Approach to Corporate Religious Liberty

Edward A. David

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
How does individual religious liberty apply to religiously affiliated groups? Edward  A. David investigates the polarized ways legal theorists seek to understand group ontology in A Christian Approach to Corporate Religious Liberty (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020).&nbsp …
American Studies March 11, 2021

Puritans Behaving Badly

Gender, Punishment, and Religion in Early America

Monica D. Fitzgerald

Hosted by Ryan Shelton
The Puritans of Early America did not start out with gendered society and piety. Instead, Monica D. Fitzerald suggests, growing tensions between lay men and clergy over what was perceived …