Seth Perry

Position
Faculty (LOA AY 2024-2025)
Title
Associate Professor of Religion
Office Phone
Office
249 - 1879 Hall
Bio/Description

Seth Perry joined the Princeton faculty in 2014. He is interested in American religious history, with a particular focus on print culture and religious authority. Perry’s first book, Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States (Princeton University Press, 2018) explores the performative, rhetorical, and material aspects of bible-based authority in early-national America. His article “Paine Detected in Mississippi: Slavery, Print Culture, and the Threat of Deism in the Early Republic” appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly in April 2021. Perry’s other work includes “The Many Bibles of Joseph Smith: Textual, Prophetic, and Scholarly Authority in Early-National Bible Culture” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and “Scripture, Time, and Authority among Early Disciples of Christ” in Church History. Current projects include a biography of Lorenzo Dow, the early-national period’s most famous itinerant preacher (his article on Dow appeared in 2015); an article on “scriptural failure”; and a project on animals in early American religious history. Perry’s writing has appeared in Early American Studiesthe Journal of Scholarly Publishing, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sightings, and the LA Review of Books. He is an academic advisor in Butler College and serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the 2023-2024 academic year.