Thomas Werge

Professor
Department of English

Degrees

B.A., Hope College; M.A., Ph.D., Cornell University

Research Profile

Thomas Werge studies the relationships between literature and religious thought in the history of ideas, in Dante, and in the Calvinist and Puritan imaginations as they shape early and 19th-century American literature. He is also interested in the opposition and tension between gnostic and sacramental visions of experience and their expression in literary forms and ideas. He has written on Thomas Shepard, essays on Dante, Melville and Twain, and Simone Weil, introductions to the writings of several Puritan writers, including William Bradford, Thomas Hooker and Shepard. He is coeditor of the journal Religion and Literature. He has received the Sheedy Award for Excellence in Teaching.