Adam Jortner
The Gods of Prophetstown: Tenskwatawa, Harrison, & the Holy War for the American Frontier, 1800-1815
Adam Jortner has spent the last several years studying the ways in which claims of supernatural power transformed American politics and Christianity. His dissertation research took him across the United States and Canada in search of miracle reports of the nineteenth century, and he has received fellowships from the McNeil Center for Early American History, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Maine Historical Society, the Kentucky Historical Society, Harvard’s Houghton Library, and the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana. He also received a Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship in 2008. Gods of Prophetstown is his first book.
Jortner received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, where he worked with Jefferson expert Peter Onuf (The Mind of Thomas Jefferson) and witchcraft historian H.C. Erik Midelfort (The Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany). While at Virginia, he won the Zora Neale Hurston Prize for the best paper on gender studies for his work on Ann Lee, founder of American Shakerism. He currently teaches American history at Auburn University, and has spoken on American religion and the history of the supernatural to groups in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
