Rate My Professor Stephen Berry

Berry’s research centers on American cultural history, exploring the practice of religion in everyday life amid cultural, socio-economic, racial, and gender differences in the antebellum South and colonial British Atlantic world, with a focus on the development of functional religious toleration. His book, A Path in the Mighty Waters: Shipboard Life and the Atlantic Crossing to the New World (Yale University Press, 2015), details shipboard experiences during Atlantic crossings to the New World. His current project investigates how American seamen mediated knowledge of world religions and cultures in the nineteenth century, supported by a joint fellowship from the Boston Athenaeum and the Congregational Library. Berry directs Simmons’s undergraduate program in public history, teaching courses such as History and Material Culture, Boston’s Past: Introduction to Public History, and supervising internships at local museums and historic sites. He offers undergraduate and graduate classes including The Atlantic World, 1500–1800; Interpreting the Past: the Craft of History; History of American Civilization I: 1607–1877; The African American Experience from Colonial Times to the Present; and Lives of Faith. As a humanities educator, Berry emphasizes developing students as critical thinkers and excellent writers. He has mentored undergraduate researchers, including recipients of the 2023 Senior Scholar Award.