On November 1, English graduate student Sarah Salter led discussion of Chapter Two (“Toward a Genealogy of Spirituality”) of John Modern’s Secularism in Antebellum America. The seminar was in anticipation of a lecture that Modern gave on the following Wednesday:  “An Instrument Infinitely More Wonderful than Television.”

Several graduate students attended the seminar, along with Hester Blum from English, which focused on both the content and the methodology of Modern’s work. Salter and Blum both pointed out, for example, that even though Modern is a scholar of religious studies, it is literary scholars who have most warmly embraced his work. The absence of Penn State historians and scholars of religion at the seminar and lecture was also noted.

Many participants expressed a sense of discovery when reading Modern’s work, unaware of the broad impact of American Protestantism on ideas of secularism, spirituality and modernity. Modern’s fluency with literature, as well as his own literary style, thus open up new venues for research.