Karl Gunther

Biography

Karl Gunther is Associate Professor of Humanities in the Center for Humanities. Before joining the Center for Humanities, he was Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, where he also served as Assistant Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Earlier, he was an Associate Professor of History at the University of Miami, where he taught for fifteen years. He has also taught in the Department of History at Rice University.

Gunther’s research focuses on the English Reformation. His first book, Reformation Unbound: Protestant Visions of Reform in England, 1525-1590 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) was a finalist for the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize and the Runner-up for the American Society of Church History’s Brewer Prize. His articles have appeared in Past & Present, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, Reformation, History Compass, and in volumes on Freedom of Speech, 1550-1850 and Early Modern Literature and England’s Long Reformation. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Reformation.

Gunther earned his Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University (2007), his M.A. in History from Northwestern (2002) and his B.A. in Philosophy and History from Wheaton College (IL) (2001).

Current Projects

Gunther’s current book project, My Simple Opinion: Interpreting the Bible in the Reign of Henry VIII, sheds new light on lay biblical interpretation and theological belief in the earliest years of the English Reformation. He is also developing a third book, Wrong! Responding to Error in the English Reformation, which examines the ways in which sixteenth-century English writers made sense of their deeply polarized world.

Publications

Books
Reformation Unbound: Protestant Visions of Reform in England, 1525-1590 (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Articles & Book Chapters

“Pearls before swine: limiting godly speech in early seventeenth-century England” in Robert G. Ingram, Jason Peacey, and Alex W. Barber (eds.), Freedom of Speech, 1550-1850 (Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 47-62.

“‘Not revenged, nor repented of’: Martyrs and England’s Long Reformation” Reformation 24.2 (Fall 2019), pp. 138-150.
-Republished in David Loewenstein and Alison Shell (eds.), Early Modern Literature and England’s Long Reformation (Routledge, 2021), pp. 138-150.

“The Marian Persecution and Early Elizabethan Protestants: Persecutors, Apostates, and the Wages of Sin” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 107:1 (October 2016), pp. 137-164.

“Rebuilding the Temple: James Pilkington, Aggeus, and early Elizabethan Puritanism” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60:4 (October 2009), pp. 689-707.

“Protestant Radicalism and Political Thought in the Reign of Henry VIII” (co-authored with Ethan H. Shagan) Past & Present 194 (February 2007), pp. 35-76.

“The Origins of English Puritanism” History Compass 4:2 (March 2006), pp. 235-240.

Works in Progress

“The Bible and Elizabethan Political Thought” in Alexandra Gajda and Rory Rapple (eds.), Illuminating Elizabethan Political Thought (Manchester University Press, forthcoming).

“Hume and the Tudors,” chapter to appear in Max Skjönsberg and Felix Waldmann (eds.), Hume’s History of England: A Critical Guide (forthcoming).

My Simple Opinion: Interpreting the Bible in the Reign of Henry VIII (book manuscript in progress)

Wrong! Responding to Error in the English Reformation (book manuscript in progress)