Academic interests
Historian of 19th and 20th century religion, American and British culture, conservatism in the US, the American South, environmental history, and pop music.
Background
Randall J. Stephens is Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo. He previously taught at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne) and Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, Massachusetts). He is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture. He is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008); The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); and editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History (University of South Carolina Press, 2009). His latest book is The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll (Harvard University Press, 2018). Stephens has also written for the Atlantic, Salon, the Wilson Quarterly, Christian Century, Books & Culture, the Independent, History Today, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has been interviewed for news and culture programs on the BBC, Sky News, Al Jazeera, KBYU-FM 89.1, Austrian Youth Radio, and NPR. In 2011-12, he was a Fulbright Roving Scholar in Norway. Stephens is also one of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturers. (See full CV here.)
Higher Education
- PhD in American History, University of Florida (2003)
- MA in American History, Emporia State University (1998)
- MA in Theological Studies, Nazarene Theological Seminary (1998)
Select Research Funding
- Wigeland Fellowship, University of Chicago (2020, postponed)
- The US Embassy London (2015 and 2018)
- National Endowment for the Humanities (2016)
- The John Templeton Foundation (2008, 2013-2014)
- The US- Norway Fulbright Foundation for Educational Exchange (2011-2012)
- The Lilly Endowment (2002-2003 and 2007-2009)
- The Pew Foundation (2001)
MA and PhD Supervision
Randall is interested in supervising MAs and PhDs in: the history and culture of the US South; American political and cultural conservatism; American liberalism; American religious history; populism; British and American pop music and pop culture; America in the 20th century; the American civil rights movement; African-American history and culture; America in the 1960s; the Vietnam War; 19th century America; abolitionism and anti-slavery; British and American travel literature; American intellectual history; and American environmental history.
