Fields

Colonial and Revolutionary America; Native American History; African American History; American Religious History; Public History

 

 Bio

Richard Boles specializes in early American and United States history, particularly African American and Native American history from the colonial era to the middle of the nineteenth century, and American religious history. Boles researches race relations in northeastern Protestant churches from 1730 to 1850. His first book, Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Churches in the Early American North, was published by New York University Press. This work examines the transition from racially diverse churches during the early eighteenth century to separate American Indian and African American congregations by the early nineteenth century in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions. Boles shows that a significant portion of northern Protestants worshiped in interracial churches between 1730 and 1820. He has begun new research about religious interactions among Native Americans and African Americans in early America.

His research has been supported by a New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Grant, an Albert J. Beveridge Grant, a Gilder Lehrman Research Fellowship, an American Congregational Association-Boston Athenæum Fellowship, a Massachusetts Historical Society Fellowship, the College of Arts and Sciences, and other grants.

 

Courses  Taught
HIST 1103 Survey of American History

HIST 1483 Survey of American History to 1865

HIST 2343 Religion in America
HIST 3613 Colonial America to 1750
HIST 3623 Era of the American Revolution
HIST 4153 African American History to 1865

HIST 4903 History Senior Seminar

HIST 5120 Graduate Reading Seminar on North America to 1789
REL 4033 - American Christianity through the Colonial Period