Faculty

Isaac Stephens
Research Assistant Professor Of History

Ph.D, University of California, Riverside, 2008

Early modern Britain, with emphasis on religious, family, and women’s history 

Telephone: 615-322-9369
Email: isaac.stephens@vanderbilt.edu
Office Hours: email for an appointment
Office: 221 Benson Hall

Isaac Stephens is a historian of early modern Britain, with a particular interest in religious, family, and women’s history of the Stuart period.  Currently, he is working on a book manuscript entitled The Sweet Private Life: Patriarchy, Piety, and Singlehood in the World of a Seventeenth-Century Gentlewoman. A microhistory of the life and world of a woman named Elizabeth Isham, the book sheds new light on early modern women’s religious beliefs, their negotiations with patriarchy, their family interactions, their thoughts on marriage, and their motivations for life-writing.  Isham is also the focus of Stephens’ two recent articles: “The Courtship and Singlehood of Elizabeth Isham, 1630-1634”, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), 1-25; and “‘My Cheefest Work’: The Making of the Spiritual Autobiography of Elizabeth Isham”, Midland History (forthcoming, October 2009).  

Stephens has delivered papers in both the United States and the United Kingdom, including at the Huntington Library, Princeton University, and the University of Birmingham.  He has received awards and fellowships from the Western Conference on British Studies, the Huntington Library, and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.  His teaching interests include the social and cultural history of early modern Europe and Britain, early modern women’s history, the Renaissance and Reformation, world history, and historical methods.  He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Riverside.            

 

 

 

 

 

 

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