Melinda S. Zook

Ph.D. Georgetown University, 1993

Specialization 

Early Modern European History, Tudor-Stuart England, Political Thought and Culture, Women and Gender

Melinda S. Zook received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University. She is a specialist in the history of political thought, religion, and women in early modern Britain. Professor Zook teaches courses on English and medieval history, as well as on such topics as Shakespeare’s Kings, great books and the search for meaning and the history of toleration. She has published articles on radical politics, martyrdom, political poetry, women, religion, and teaching. Her book, Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in late Stuart England was published by Penn State Press in 1999 and in paperback in 2009. In 2013, she published Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660-1714 with Palgrave, awarded Best Book on Gender for 2013 by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. She is the co-editor of Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the Transatlantic World (2004) and Challenging Orthodoxies: The Social and Cultural World of Early Modern Women (2014); and Generations of Women Historians: Within and Beyond the Academy (2018). She is currently the Germaine Seelye Oesterle Professor of History and Director of Cornerstone: Integrated Liberal Arts for the College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University.

Dr. Zook is currently accepting Graduate Students. 

List of Publications

      

Books

Generations of Women Historians: Within and Beyond the Academy. Co-edited with Hilda L. Smith. Palgrave, 2018.

Challenging Orthodoxies: The Social and Cultural Worlds of Early Modern Women. Co-edited with Sigrun Haude. Ashgate, 2014.

Protestantism, Politics and Women in Britain, 1660-1714. Palgrave, 2013. Awarded Best Book on Gender for 2013 by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

Revolutionary Currents: Nation-Building in the Transatlantic World, 1688-1821. Co-edited with Michael Morrison. Rowman & Littlefield, cloth & paper, 2004.

Radical Whigs & Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England. Penn State Press, cloth, 1999; paper, 2008.

Articles & Book Chapters

“Enlightened Anglicanism: Archbishop John Tillotson and the Latitudinarian Church,” History of European Ideas, forthcoming 2024

“Blood will have Blood:” The Regicide Trials & the Popular Press,” in State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart, eds., Brian Cowan and Scott Sowerby. The Boydell Press, 2021, 73-92.

“Literature, Religion and Party Politics, 1660-1714,” in Emergent Nation: Early Modern British Literature in Transition: 1660-1714, ed., Elizabeth Sauer. Cambridge University Press, 2019, 109-28.

“C.V. Wedgwood: The Historian and the World,” in Generations of Women Historians: Within and Beyond the Academy, eds., Hilda L. Smith and Melinda S. Zook. Palgrave 2018, 115-135.

“Women, Anglican Orthodoxy, and the Church in the Ages of Danger,” in Challenging Orthodoxies: The Social and Cultural Worlds of Early Modern Women, eds., Sigrun Haude and Melinda S. Zook. Ashgate, 2014, 101-122.

“A Latitudinarian Queen: Mary II and her Churchmen,” in Women and Religion in Early Modern England, eds., Sarah Apetrei and Hannah Smith. Ashgate, 2014, 98-115.

“Turn-Coats and Double-Agents in Restoration & Revolution England: The Case of Robert Ferguson, The Plotter,” Eighteenth Century Studies, 42/3 (2009): 363-78.

“The Shocking Death of Mary II: Political and Gender Crisis in Late Stuart England, The British Scholar, 1/1 (September 2008):21-36.

“Religious Nonconformity & the Problem of Dissent in the Works of Aphra Behn and Mary Astell,” in Mary Astell: Gender, Reason, Faith, eds., William Kobrener and Michal Michelson. Ashgate, 2007, 99-113.

“Nursing Sedition: Women, Dissent, & the Whig Struggle,” in Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice & Britain in the 1680s,” ed. Jason McElligot. Ashgate, 2006, 189-204.

“The Political Poetry of Aphra Behn,” The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn, eds., Janet Todd and Derek Hughes. Cambridge University Press, 2004, 46-67.

“The Restoration Remembered:  The First Whigs and the Makings of their History,” Seventeenth Century, XVII (Autumn 2002): 213-34.

“Integrating Men’s History into Women’s History: A Proposition,” The History Teacher, 35, 1 (May 2002): 373-87.

“Contextualizing Aphra Behn:  Plays, Politics and Party, 1678-1689,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. Hilda Smith. Cambridge University Press, 1998, 75-93.

“Violence, Martyrdom and Radical Politics:  Rethinking the Glorious Revolution,” in Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart England, ed. Howard Nenner. Rochester University Press, 1997, 74-95.

“The Bloody Assizes:  Whig Martyrdom and Memory after the Glorious Revolution,” Albion, 27 (Fall 1995): 373-96.

“Early Whig Ideology, Ancient Constitutionalism and the Reverend Samuel Johnson,” Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993): 139-65.

“History’s Mary:  The Propagation of Queen Mary II, 1689-1694,” in Women and Sovereignty, ed. Louise Olga Fradenburg. Edinburgh University Press, 1992, 168-191.

Other

Media article, “Gen Z is ready to talk. Are professors ready to listen? a successful gen-ed program is using the humanities to reach this very different generation of students,” Chronicle of Higher Education (September 18, 2023).  

Webpage, A Toolkit for Revitalizing the Role of the Humanities in General Education. First published in 2019; revised in 2023.

Book Chapter, “Bringing Meaning to the Lives of Students: Great Teachers, Great Texts and General Education,” A Student’s Search for Meaning: Reflections on the Intersections of College Chaplaincy, Liberal Arts and the University, ed. James W. Fraser (London: Ethics International Press, 2023), 7-14.

Journal Article, Co-authored with Amanda Mayes, “Stranded on Calypso’s Island: Cornerstone, COVID, and power of transformative texts,” Butler Center for Leadership Excellence and ADVANCE Series 3/2 (Summer 2020): 61-72.

Journal Article, “Giant Leaps for the Liberal Arts at Purdue,” in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 5:6 (December 2019), 45-51.

Magazine Article, “The Accidental Revolution: The English Reformation,” in Christian History, 118 (2016), 39-42.

Eleven entries, World Book. World Book International, 2018.

Fourteen articles, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004.