Dr. Everett Messamore

Postdoctoral Researcher

Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Curt und Heidemarie Engelhorn Palais
Hauptstraße 120
69117 Heidelberg

T: +49 (0)6221-54 33 99
E-mail: emessamore@hca.uni-heidelberg.de

Sprechstunde nach Vereinbarung

Everett Messamore is a postdoctoral researcher at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. His research centers around nineteenth-century alternative religions and reform. Currently, he is a research fellow of the DFG-funded research group “De/sacralization of Texts,” in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. Along with Jan Stievermann, he works on the subproject “American Scriptures: Transformations of Scriptural Authority and Canonicity in 18th- and 19th-Century American Protestantism,” and looks at the creation of inspired texts by figures within Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism, exploring how these texts understood their relationship to the canonical Bible as well as revelation and inspiration. Messamore’s dissertation, completed at the University of Heidelberg, is currently being revised for publication and shows the underappreciated contribution of nineteenth-century American Spiritualists to global discourses constructing modern categories of “religion” and “world religions.” An article related to this project, exploring these developments within the Harmonialist circle of Andrew Jackson Davis and their connection to radical forms of authority has been published by the journal Religion and American Culture. He has also written on “American Romanticism and Esotericism” in the Handbook of American Romanticism (2021, De Gruyter). He is coeditor of a couple of forthcoming volumes on nineteenth-century American scriptural practices and innovation and on sacred music and poetics.