title: Patrick Allitt
text: # Patrick Allitt
  
  Patrick N. Allitt (born 1956) is a British historian and academic who serves as the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University. He has written seven books on religious history, education, politics and environmental history, and has produced several lectures for The Great Courses.
  
  ## Biography
  
  ### Early life
  
  Allitt was born in 1956 in Mickleover on the outskirts of Derby in Derbyshire. He studied at Hertford College, Oxford (1974–1977), then moved to America and gained a PhD in American history at University of California Berkeley (1986).
  
  ### Career
  
  He held the Arthur Blank Chair for Teaching Excellence at Emory University and was, for five years, director of Emory's Center for Teaching and Curriculum. He is now the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
  
  His recent publications include contributions to The American Conservative, The Spectator (London), The National Interest and Modern Intellectual History. He is also the principal lecturer in seven of "The Great Courses" made by The Teaching Company of Chantilly, Virginia. He speaks in many parts of the United States and leads college-level teaching workshops. In the late 1980s he wrote a short history of American biographies of Jesus Christ.
  
  His scholarship has been widely reviewed in the leading history journals. Professor Lawrence Moore of Cornell University says "Any writer who has attempted to track a subject through a long stretch of time appreciates how difficult it is to balance the requirement of inclusiveness with a consistent elaboration of central themes. Patrick Allitt in his confident survey of American religion since World War II succeeds in this task far better than most and has produced a volume of immense value to university students, general readers, and scholars needing a reliable reference source."
  
  