Dr. Everett H. Messamore

Everett Messamore is a postdoctoral researcher at the HCA. His research centers around nineteenth-century alternative religions and reform. Currently, he is a research fellow of the DFG-funded research group “De/sacralization of Texts,” in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. Along with Jan Stievermann, he works on the subproject “American Scriptures: Transformations of Scriptural Authority and Canonicity in 18th- and 19th-Century American Protestantism,” and looks at the creation of inspired texts by figures within Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism. His dissertation, completed at the University of Heidelberg, is currently being revised for publication and shows the underappreciated contribution of nineteenth-century American Spiritualists to global discourses constructing modern categories of “religion” and “world religions.” Everett Messamore is also the coeditor of several forthcoming volumes on nineteenth-century American scriptural practices and innovation and on sacred music and poetics.

• 19th-Century American Religion, Culture, and Reform
• New Religious Movements
• Andrew Jackson Davis and Spiritualism

2022: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
2021: Research Assistant, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
2019: Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, University of Notre Dame, History Department
2018: Research Assistant, History Department and Heidelberg Center for American Studies
2018: PhD American Studies, University of Heidelberg
2015-2018: Teaching Assistant, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
2015: MA American Studies, Heidelberg Center for American Studies

“Andrew Jackson Davis and Spiritualist Constructions of Religion(s),” Religion & American Culture 33, no.2 (2023), pp 145-82.
“American Romanticism and Esotericism,” in: Philipp Löffler, Clemens Spahr and Jan Stievermann (eds..), Handbook of American Romanticism. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.
“Spiritualism and the Language of Universal Religion in Nineteenth-Century America.” Dissertation. Heidelberg: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 2018. 

• Research fellow of the DFG Research Group De/Sacralization of Texts: “American Scriptures: Transformations of Scriptural Authority and Canonicity in 18th- and 19th-Century American Protestantism.” (FOR 2828): P8