Sommerville, C. John 1938- (Charles John Sommerville)

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Sommerville, C. John 1938- (Charles John Sommerville)

PERSONAL:

Born August 15, 1938, in Lawrence, KS; son of William Baker (an educator) and Kathryn Marie (a biologist) Sommerville; married Susan Gail Hines (an educator), June 12, 1964; children: Eden Elizabeth, Henry Samuel. Education: University of Kansas, B.A., 1960, M.A., 1963; attended University of Reading, 1961-62; University of Iowa, Ph.D., 1970. Politics: "Contrarian." Religion: Protestant.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Gainesville, FL. Office—Department of History, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117320, Gainesville, FL 32611. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, historian, and educator. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, instructor in Western civilization, 1968-71; University of Florida, Gainesville, professor of English history, beginning 1971, became professor emeritus. Community volunteer worker, including work for World Weather Watch.

MEMBER:

North American Conference on British Studies, American Historical Association, Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton University).

AWARDS, HONORS:

NDEA-IV fellowship, University of Iowa, 1966-67; Clark Library Seminar fellowship, UCLA, 1973; American Philosophical Society travel grant, 1974; President's Scholar designation, University of Florida, 1977; University of Florida Humanities Council grant, 1974, 1978; University of Florida Research Development award, 1985, 1989; Earhart Foundation Research grant, 1996, 1998, 2000; Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change, University of Virginia, 1994 (declined); Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions, senior fellow, 1996.

WRITINGS:

Popular Religion in Restoration England, University of Florida Press (Gainesville, FL), 1977.

The Rise and Fall of Childhood, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1982, revised edition, Random House (New York, NY), 1990.

The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1992.

The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Informational Society, InterVarsity Press (Downers Grove, IL), 1999.

The Decline of the Secular University, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to books and anthologies, including The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays, edited by Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg, Harper (New York, NY), 1973; Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Richard Greaves and Robert Zaller, Harvester (Brighton, England); Chinese Views of Childhood, edited by Anne Behnke Kinney, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1995; The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, edited by Robert Wuthnow, Congressional Quarterly (Washington, DC), 1998; and Reader's Guide to British History, edited by David Loades, Fitzroy Dearborn (London, England), 2003. Contributor to history journals and periodicals, including Past and Present, Church History, Sociology of Religion, World and I, Fides et Historia, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, History Today, Theology Today, First Things, Albion, Social Science History, Journal of Religious History, Journal of the History of Ideas, History of Education Quarterly, Journal of Psychohistory, Journal of British Studies, and Studies in Popular Culture.

Author's works have been translated into Dutch, Danish, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, and Thai.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian, educator, and author C. John Sommerville is professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida. A frequent contributor to scholarly journals and the author of several book-length works, his writings explore a variety of subjects, from family and childhood issues in history to the impact of news on historical and contemporary society and the place of religion in educational institutions and society at large.

In The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith, Sommerville explores how early English society, during the Protestant Reformation and in the years after Henry VIII's break with the church, actively worked to remove religious values and church influence from numerous aspects of daily life. This secularization affected "developments in and attitudes toward technology, art, politics, language, and theology in the years 1500 to 1700," noted Amy Thompson McCandless, writing in the Historian. Throughout the Tudor and Stuart eras, this secularization was not intended to make England "irreligious, or even anti-religious, but rather to separate almost all aspects of life from religion, and so to make religion a matter of personal, individual faith rather than an over-arching and all-determining culture," observed David Armitage in History Today. What Sommerville sees happening during this period is a gradual dissolution of religion as the foundation to all aspects of society, moving out of influence in government and other areas of human activity and becoming instead a matter of individual participation and choice. Sommerville identifies causes for this fundamental shift, including the "development of the nation state, the nature of Protestant spirituality and the rise of the printing press," noted Justin Champion in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Carol Zisowitz, writing in the Journal of Social History, commented that Sommerville's work "illustrates many ways in which religion disappeared from external practices while it became more internalized. In its argument that the Protestants sowed the seeds of secularism and rationalism, it is not original, but it is certainly comprehensive and incorporates a wide range of different types of historical material." Champion called Sommerville's book a "brave attempt at addressing a central issue in early modern history that many others have side-stepped."

The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information, contains Sommerville's examination of the development of press freedom and influence in the late seventeenth century. News periodicals had existed in England since at least 1638, Sommerville notes, but considerable political pressure meant that the press was not especially free. "There were times when nervous editors filled their papers with news from every capital in Europe because it was safer to print than home news," observed George Evans in the Contemporary Review. However, as the seventeenth century drew to a close, press freedom increased and the periodical press became an essential element of British society. The cause, states Sommerville, was "periodicity," or "regular publishing schedules which, by giving the news a forward spin, pointed the reader towards the next issue of the paper," Evans noted. Sommerville "stresses the necessity, in order to survive in the trade of selling news, of enticing readers to buy the next installment of the paper; the presentation of the news must always imply a continuing, developing story, the next episode of which must not be missed," observed Ann Robson in History: Review of New Books. This need to produce an audience that constantly required a fresh batch of news changed the ways in which news was reported. These changes, in turn, "produced a revolution in public consciousness every bit as important as the introduction of printing," Evans remarked. Robson called Sommerville's book "absorbing" and "thought-provoking," while Evans concluded that it is a "solid achievement and is a welcome addition to the history of the British press."

In The Decline of the Secular University, Sommerville assesses the state of religion in the American college experience. He concludes that universities have in large part removed religion from campuses, but that doing so has robbed students of a vital context in which they should be able to consider some of the most important of life's questions. Sommerville believes that "if the university is to be a place where life's questions are pursued, religion needs to be part of, if not central to, such conversations," commented Todd C. Ream in Books & Culture. "What the university does do, it does well enough—teaching skills and competence negotiable in the world of economics. What it cannot do, having abandoned more traditional methods of inquiry, is engage in questions that involve transcendence and offer criteria for spiritual development and authentic maturity," observed Steve J. Van Der Weele in a review in Christianity and Literature. Sommerville does not endorse religion as a means of inducing worship on campus, but as an expanded framework in which students can consider the many concepts and issues before them. "We are questioning, wondering creatures, and Sommerville wants universities to help us question and wonder better," remarked Stephen Carter in Christianity Today. A Publishers Weekly critic named the book "brief, hard-hitting and often brilliant."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 1984, Anthony Esler, review of The Rise and Fall of Childhood, p. 95; June, 1993, Susan Dwyer Amussen, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 871; June, 1993, Dewey D. Wallace, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England: From Religious Culture to Religious Faith, p. 866; December, 1998, Harold Weber, review of The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information, p. 1589.

Books & Culture, May 1, 2007, Todd C. Ream, "The Devil We Know? Get Ready for the ‘Postsecular’ University," review of The Decline of the Secular University, p. 19.

Choice, September, 1992, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 199; December, 1992, L.B. Tipson, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 637.

Children's Literature, January 1, 1993, Anne Scott MacLeod, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 179.

Christianity and Literature, September 22, 2006, Steve J. Van Der Weele, review of The Decline of the Secular University, p. 197.

Christianity Today, December 1, 2006, Stephen Carter, "When 7 X 5 = 75: And You Thought Secular Bias on Campuses Was Bad," review of The Decline of the Secular University, p. 61.

Church History, March, 1993, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 116; March, 1995, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 123.

Contemporary Review, September, 1997, George Evans, review of The News Revolution in England, p. 156.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, fall, 1994, Susan Rosa, review of The Secularization of Early-Modern England.

English Historical Review, June 1, 1999, Frances Henderson, review of The News Revolution in England, p. 714.

Historian, winter, 1993, Amy Thompson McCandless, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 364.

Historical Journal, March, 1995, Diarmaid MacCulloch, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 151.

History: Review of New Books, summer, 1997, Ann Robson, review of The News Revolution in England.

History Today, December, 1993, David Armitage, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 52.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, October, 1993, R.A. Houlbrooke, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 510; October, 1994, Nicholas Tyacke, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 489; January, 1996, Nicholas Tyacke, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 124.

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, June, 1995, Bryan Wilson, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 276.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, January 1, 1994, Justin Champion, review of The Secularization of Early England, p. 154.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, September 22, 1993, Margo Todd, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 322; summer, 1994, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England.

Journal of Modern History, March, 1999, F.J. Levy, review of The News Revolution in England, p. 187.

Journal of Religion, April, 1994, Charles L. Cohen, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England, p. 256.

Journal of Social History, summer, 1994, Carol Zisowitz Stearns, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 841.

Publishers Weekly, May 22, 2006, review of The Decline of the Secular University, p. 12.

Sixteenth Century Journal, summer, 1993, William E. Burns, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England; fall, 1994, Carole Levin, review of The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England.

Times Higher Education Supplement, February 12, 1993, John Morrill, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 21.

Times Literary Supplement, January 29, 1993, Brendan Bradshaw, review of The Secularization of Early Modern England, p. 24; February 21, 1997, Michael Harris, review of The News Revolution in England, p. 26.