Adrian Chastain Weimer, Ph.D.
Education:
Ph.D., Harvard University
Contact:
Ruane 121
401.865.2698
aweimer@providence.edu
Adrian Chastain Weimer is a professor of history at Providence College. A historian of colonial America, she researches constitutionalism, legal access, Indigenous diplomacy, and religious toleration. Her most recent book, A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire (2023), was awarded the John Winthrop Prize. It centers on grass roots political mobilizing in the 1660s, when puritan colonists creatively organized to protect local institutions from the demands of the newly restored Stuart monarchy. She also recently co-edited The Writings of Daniel Gookin and Allied Documents (forthcoming in 2026). The Bay Colony’s Commissioner for Indian Affairs, Gookin (1612-1687) recorded his frequent interactions with Nipmuc, Massachusett, Pennacook, and other Native communities in social, legal, religious, and wartime contexts.
She is currently writing a book on Anglo-American and Indigenous multilateral diplomacy in the later seventeenth-century, centering on the alliances of Pawtucket leader James Quannapohit. Weimer’s work has been honored with the Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize, the Michael Kennedy Prize, and with long term fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Books
A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). *Winner of the John Winthrop Prize
The Writings of Daniel Gookin and Allied Documents, co-edited with David D. Hall (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts/University of Virginia Press [forthcoming 2026])
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“Restoration Puritanism in the Atlantic World, 1660-1700,” in the Oxford Handbook of Puritanism, eds. Francis Bremer, Ann Hughes, and Greg Salazar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025).
“Political Reform and Devotional Culture in Early New England,” in Understanding and Teaching Religion in American History, eds. Karen Johnson and Jonathan Yeager (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024).
“Daniel Gookin’s ‘Doings and Sufferings,’ and the Contradictions of the New England Mission,” with David D. Hall, American Contact: Objects of Intercultural Encounters and the Boundaries of Book History, eds. Glenda Goodman and Rhae Lynn Barnes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).
“Michael Wigglesworth,” Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).
The “Contynuance of our Civell and Religious Liberties”: Plymouth Colonists’ 1665 “Humble Addrese” to the King,” Early American Literature 56.1 (2021): 219-232.
“The Quaker ‘Invasion,’” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Vol. 1, ed. Susan Juster (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
“Colonial Quakerism,” co-authored with Andrew Murphy, The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, ed. John Coffey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
“The Resistance Petitions of 1664-1665: Confronting the Restoration in Massachusetts Bay,” New England Quarterly 92.2 (June 2019): 221–262.
“Quakers, Puritans, and the Problem of Godly Loyalty in the Early Restoration” in The Worlds of William Penn, eds. Andrew Murphy and John Smolinski (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), 283-302.
“Huguenot Refugees and the Meaning of Charity in Early New England,” Church History 86.2 (June 2017): 365-397.
“Elizabeth Hooton and the Lived Politics of Toleration in Massachusetts Bay,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 74.1 (January 2017): 43-76. *Winner of the Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize
“Martyrdom in North America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. John Corrigan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
“Holmes, Obadiah,” in American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
“From Human Suffering to Divine Friendship: Meat out of the Eater and Devotional Reading in Early New England,” Early American Literature 51.1 (2016): 3-39.
“Affliction and the Stony Heart in Early New England,” in Puritanism and Emotion in the Early Modern World, eds. Alec Ryrie and Tom Schwanda (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 121-143.
“Heaven and Heavenly Piety in Colonial American Elegies” in The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul, eds. Peter Clarke, Tony Claydon (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2009). *Winner of the Michael Kennedy Prize
“Gould, Thomas” in American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Multimedia and Public History
“The 1664-1665 Resistance Petitions,” Commonwealth Museum. Video interview, primary source collection, and curriculum materials, 2024
“How did town petitions work to defend representative government against royal authoritarianism in early New England?” Video and module for Authoritarianism 101 Project, American Historical Review [forthcoming 2026]
Fellowships and Awards
Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, 2025-
Outstanding Faculty Scholar Award, Providence College, 2025
John Carter Brown Library Longterm Research Fellowship (awarded for Jan.-June 2025)
John Winthrop Prize, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2024
Society of Colonial Wars Fellowship in Memory of Kenneth R. LaVoy Jr., 2023
Elected to Membership, American Antiquarian Society, 2022
Elected to Membership, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2020
Committee on Aid to Faculty Research Award, Providence College, 2020
National Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture, 2019-
Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize, American Society of Church History, 2018
Elected to Society of Fellows, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2018
National Endowment for the Humanities Long-term Research Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, Aug.-Dec. 2017
National Endowment for the Humanities Long-term Research Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Jan.-June 2018
Summer Scholars Award, Providence College, 2016
W.B.H. Dowse Research Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2015
Young Scholar in American Religion, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, 2010-2012
Short-Term Research Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2011
“Random Acts of Kindness” Faculty Award, University of Mississippi Student Council, 2011
Peterson Research Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 2010
Michael Kennedy Prize, Ecclesiastical History Society, 2008
American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2007-2008
Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship, 2007 (honorary)
Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History Fellowship, 2007 (honorary)
