Eric Carlsson

Position title: Teaching Professor of History

Phone: 608.263.1849

Address:
Office: 5217 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5034 Mosse Humanities
Office Hours: Wednesday 11:00am-1:00pm and by appointment

Biography

I study the intellectual and religious history of early modern Europe and the north Atlantic world, with a focus on the intersection of religion and Enlightenment thought, c. 1650-1800.

My research and teaching interests include the history of theology and biblical scholarship, beliefs about the supernatural, notions of death and the afterlife, skepticism and unbelief, Jewish-Christian relations, and theories of secularization. I am currently working on a book project that takes controversies surrounding the seminal thinker Johann Salomo Semler, reputed creator of Protestant “liberal theology,” as a lens for exploring some of the central debates of the German Enlightenment on such matters as demonology and anti-Judaism, “enthusiasm,” biblical hermeneutics, and public and private religion.

I teach a range of courses on thought and religion in early modern Europe and the Atlantic world as well as a two-semester survey of themes in Western intellectual and religious history from antiquity to the present.

Education

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.Div., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
B.A., University of Michigan

Selected Publications

“The Protestant Enlightenment.” In The Oxford History of Modern German Theology, vol. 1, ed. Grant Kaplan and Kevin Vander Schel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).
“Eighteenth-Century Neology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800, ed. Ulrich L. Lehner, Richard Muller, and A. G. Roeber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
“Pietism and Enlightenment Theology’s Historical Turn: The Case of Johann Salomo Semler.” In The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, ed. Christian T. Collins Winn, et al. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011).
“The Eighteenth Century,” “The Enlightenment,” “Johann Lorenz von Mosheim,” “Johann Salomo Semler,” and “Rationalism.” In Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions, ed. Timothy J. Wengert, et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).

Selected Awards

Fellowship for Enlightenment Studies, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Excellence in Teaching and Student Engagement Award, Department of History, UW–Madison
Distinguished Honors Faculty Award, College of Letters & Science, UW-Madison
Fellow of the UW–Madison Teaching Academy
University Housing Honored Instructor, UW–Madison

History Courses

History 201 – The Historian’s Craft: Religion and the Enlightenment
History 201 – The Historian’s Craft: Belief and Unbelief in Modern Europe
History 201 – The Historian’s Craft: The Supernatural in Early Modern Europe
History 208 – Western Intellectual and Religious History to 1500
History 209 – Western Intellectual and Religious History since 1500
History 229 – Religious Renewal in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800
History 409 – Christianity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800
History 411 – The Enlightenment and Its Critics
History 500 – Death and the Afterlife in Western Thought
History 600 – Religion and the Enlightenment