Louis. His research, writing, and teaching focus on early American culture, especially the Puritans. Van Engen’s first book, Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England (Oxford University Press, 2015) explored the broad role of sympathy in Puritan theology and its ramifications in early American literature. His next project, The Meaning of America: How the United States Became the City on a Hill (Yale University Press), offers a history of American exceptionalism and the rhetoric of American origins, tracking how the United States came to be thought of as a “city on a hill” built on the foundation of Puritan New England.