Blake Johnson

Image of Blake Johnson.

Blake Johnson

Type
Dissertation Fellow
Department
History
2009-10

Titled The Greater Awakening: Print and Popular Protestantism in Europe and the Atlantic World, 1660-1760, Blake Johnson's dissertation in History analyzes the relationships between communities of Protestants in continental Europe and the Atlantic world during the Enlightenment. Mr. Johnson argues that the nature and extent of the collaborations among Protestants created an international community, termed "Popular Protestantism," that paralleled and at points intersected with both the Republic of Letters and the Enlightenment. Thus, at the same time that philosophes began developing an international "Enlightened" intellectual culture, Protestants were forming a less acknowledged and apparent international religious intellectual culture that was nonetheless effective and important. In his reading of Protestant writing and letters as well as publishing records, Mr. Johnson concludes that it was the advent of a popular Protestant print culture in addition to the Enlightenment that transformed European and American culture and humanity.