Sara Georgini Defends Dissertation, Accepts Series Editor Position at Adams Papers

     On Wednesday, April 6, graduate student Sara Georgini successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, “Household Gods: Creating Adams Family Religion in the American Republic, 1583-1927.” Over the course of the long nineteenth century, American Christianity changed dramatically, leaving lasting imprints on how families lived, worked, played, and prayed. As America’s prolific “first family,” the Adamses of Massachusetts were key interpreters of the place of religion within a rapidly changing American republic facing denominational turf wars, anti-Catholic violence, a burgeoning market economy, Civil War, shifting gender roles, and the collapse of providentialism. Constant globe-trotters who documented their cultural travels, the Adamses developed a cosmopolitan Christianity that blended discovery and criticism, faith and doubt. As Georgini explains, the Adamses’ cosmopolitan encounters led them to become leading lay critics of New England religion, even as they marshaled Christian rhetoric to sustain American democracy. While scholars have relied on “fringe” groups to explain the growth and democratization of American Christianity, little has been studied of seekers like the Adamses, transnational agents of American thought and culture who sought avidly among other faiths yet chose to stay within the mainline fold. This study offers a new perspective on the political dynasty, by mapping the religious journeys of Americans who looked for God in eclectic places and then made their return, greatly changed, to the family pew.

     Georgini will receive her Ph.D. at commencement in May. She has accepted a full-time position as Series Editor of The Papers of John Adams, part of The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society. She is a co-founder and contributor to The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History Blog. She tweets about public history, American religion, library life, and digital humanities: @sarageorgini.

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