Dr. Andrew Thomas came to Salem in 2007. He was born in Oregon, but mostly raised in the Rocky Mountains of Utah. When Dr. Thomas was a graduate student, he taught first-year German and a few history courses at Purdue University. The students and the historical ambiance of the college attracted Dr. Thomas to Salem College. Besides teaching upper-division courses in European history from ancient Greece to the present, he also teaches the world history survey courses. Dr. Thomas also teaches courses that are cross-listed with the health humanities major.

When Dr. Thomas is not at Salem, he spends a lot of time with his family. His wife, Sarah Ann, is from Utah as well. Together they have three children. His family enjoys traveling, camping, cross-country skiing, back packing, sailing, and bird watching.

Advice to prospective history students: “I have never regretted choosing history; I am living my passion and my dream. If history is your passion, pursue it!”

Research Interests

Late medieval piety, Renaissance Humanism, Protestant and Catholic Reformations, Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations, Baroque Absolutism, and the early Enlightenment with a particular emphasis on Central Europe. He also has a secondary interest in the early modern transatlantic world.

Publications

Books

The Apocalypse in Reformation Nuremberg: Jews and Turks in Andreas Osiander’s World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022.

A House Divided: Wittelsbach Confessional Court Cultures in the Holy Roman Empire, c. 1550-1650. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

Book Chapters

“The Culture of the Palatine Court in Heidelberg at the Dawn of the Seventeenth Century.” In Churfürstlicher hochzeitlicher Heimführungs Triumph. Inszenierung und Wirkung der Hochzeit Kurfürst Friedrichs V. mit Elisabeth Stuart 1613, eds. Nichola Hayton, Hanns Hubach, and Marco Neumaier, 327-350. Mannheimer historische Schriften. Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2019.

[coauthor Charles Ingrao]. “Piety and Power: The Empresses-Consort of the High Baroque.” In Queenship in Europe 1660-1815: The Role of the Consort, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr, 107-130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Articles

“Wittelsbachs, Habsburgs, and Hohenzollerns: Gender, Kinship, and Confession in the Funeral Literature for Susanna of Bavaria.” Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017): 131-144.

“Francis Daniel Pastorius and the Northern Protestant Transatlantic World.” Acta Comeniana: International Review of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History 28 (2014): 95-126.

[coauthor Charles Ingrao]. “Piety and Patronage: The Empresses-Consort of the High Baroque.” German History 20 (2002): 20-43.

Favorites

Favorite Books

Harvard Classics 
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan the Wise

Favorite Movies

Awakenings
Enchanted April

Favorite Quotation 

“Carpe Diem!”