Burnett, Amy Nelson 1957-

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Burnett, Amy Nelson 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born April 27, 1957.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. University of Nebraska—Lincoln, beginning 1989, became professor of history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

College Award for Distinguished Teaching, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, 1999; Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer prize, American Society of Church History, for The Yoke of Christ: Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline.

WRITINGS:

The Yoke of Christ: Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline, Northeast Missouri State University (Kirksville, MO), 1994.

Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Daniel Bernstein and Amy Goodburn) Making Teaching and Learning Visible: Course Portfolios and the Peer Review of Teaching, Anker Publishing (Bolton, MA), 2006.

(With Paul Savory and Amy Goodburn) Inquiry into the College Classroom: A Journey toward Scholarly Teaching, Anker Publishing (Bolton, MA), 2007.

Author of essays and articles on the Protestant Reformation in southern Germany and Switzerland.

SIDELIGHTS:

Amy Nelson Burnett specializes in early modern European history with a focus on the era's Protestant clergy and the early Reformed tradition. Her first book, The Yoke of Christ: Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline, won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer prize essay of the American Society of Church History. The book was called "a major addition to the ever-growing literature on the Reformation in Strasbourg" by the English Historical Review contributor John L. Flood.

The Yoke of Christ looks at how the ideas of Martin Bucer (1491-1551), who became a leading reformer in the Protestant movement in the German city of Stras- bourg, evolved over the years, especially concerning the need for Christians to exhibit self-discipline as they formed a new Christian society. In particular, Burnett examines how successful Bucer was in getting people to accept and act on his views. The author begins by focusing on the core theology of Bucer and then examines Bucer's experiences as a pastor in the 1530s and how his views on absolution and the minster's role in exercising discipline evolved. The author examines Bucer's differences with Roman Catholic reformers and writes about his time in Strasbourg as he fought to gain acceptance for his views concerning the Christian faith. The author ends with a chapter concerning Bucer's time teaching in England.

"Burnett's work has a number of strengths," wrote Elsie McKee in Renaissance Quarterly. "Perhaps most helpfully, it shows with new clarity and detail both the richness of Bucer's understanding of ‘discipline’ … and the way this teaching encompasses and makes coherent sense of various strands of the reformer's work which have often been piled up in layers rather than woven together." D.F. Wright wrote in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History that the author "has produced a work of first-rate importance for all students of Bucer, of the Strasbourg reform, of sixteenth-century endeavours to indoctrinate and discipline laity and of significant topics such as confirmation. The method is painstakingly thorough, the exposition always lucid, the bibliographical coverage without obvious gaps …, the transcription of Latin and German sources highly accurate … and their translation almost of the same standard."

In Burnett's next book, Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629, the author writes about the Reformation, which represented a critical break from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther. Specifically, Burnett focuses on the Protestant clergy who were given the task of teaching the masses about the ideas of the Reformation's religious leaders. "The Protestant reformers believed that their chief responsibility was to communicate a message, which they directed toward two different audiences," the author writes in the book's introduction. "Their most immediate task was to teach the gospel to the laity. The word of God had to be proclaimed as fully and as accurately as possible, adapted to the laity's level of understanding and explained to meet the circumstances of their lives. The reformers were too few to undertake this task alone, however, and so they also had to teach other pastors, both their contemporaries and their successors, to communicate the evangelical message as well."

Teaching the Reformation examines Reformed pastors at the church of Basel through four generations, demonstrating the evolution of Reformed theology and the training of pastors. The author details how the educational differences over time influenced how Basel clergy taught the Reformed theology and how their education affected their other duties, such as administering the sacraments and offering counseling to their parishioners. The different generations of Protestant clergy differed significantly, she explains, and the clergy in Basel developed a distinctive style of preaching the Reformed theology.

"This deeply researched social and institutional history of Basel's pastorate during the century after the city's adoption of the Reformation is an important local study that contributes to the historiography of confessionalization and the question of the Reformation's success or failure," wrote Brad S. Gregory in Church History. Gregory called the book "impressively researched, clearly organized, well-written, and helpfully augmented by a number of graphs and tables."

Burnett is also author with Daniel Bernstein and Amy Goodburn of Making Teaching and Learning Visible: Course Portfolios and the Peer Review of Teaching. The authors provide examples of course portfolios developed from a four-year project on the peer review of teaching. They offer teachers a model of peer review that is designed to help teachers improve their courses and student learning. The book includes comments from more than two hundred college professors from various disciplines. Noting that the authors "draw on long experience as veterans of initiatives … to move teaching and learning into the academy's public sphere," Change contributor Mary Taylor Huber wrote that they "make a strong case for the course portfolio as a legitimate scholarly genre that is well suited to making teaching and learning accessible to peers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Burnett, Amy Nelson, Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 1996, James M. Kittelson, review of The Yoke of Christ: Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline, p. 188; February, 2008, C. Scott Dixon, review of Teaching the Reformation: Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529-1629, p. 274.

Change, May-June, 2007, Mary Taylor Huber, "Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning," includes review of Making Teaching and Learning Visible: Course Portfolios and the Peer Review of Teaching.

Church History, March, 1997, Richard L. Harrison, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 113; December, 2007, Brad S. Gregory, review of Teaching the Reformation, p. 849.

English Historical Review, February, 1997, John L. Flood, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 188.

Historian, fall, 1996, Kathryn Edwards, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 180.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, July, 1996, D.F. Wright, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 573.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 2008, William Monter, review of Teaching the Reformation, p. 460.

Journal of the History of Ideas, January, 1995, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 171.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 1996, Elsie McKee, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 398; fall, 2007, Jeffrey Mallinson, review of Teaching the Reformation, p. 938.

Sixteenth Century Journal, winter, 1995, John Leith, review of The Yoke of Christ, p. 1042.