Abram Van Engen

Abram Van Engen is the Stanley Elkin Professor of the Humanities, Director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics (starting July 1, 2025), and chair of the English Department (through 2026) at Washington University in St. Louis. Van Engen writes and teaches on religion and literature, with a focus on early America and its many afterlives.

Among other books, he is the author of City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (Yale UP 2020), which won the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Award and the Pelikan Award. His most recent book is Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church (Eerdmans 2024), which was named the Best Book of 2024 in Culture, Poetry, and the Arts from Christianity Today. His research and writing have appeared in multiple magazines and journals, and his work teaching poetry has expanded into an award-winning podcast he co-hosts called Poetry for All.

Van Engen recently served as the Executive Director of The Carver Project, a non-profit for Christian faculty and students. He earned his PhD and MA from Northwestern University and his BA in English and Philosophy from Calvin University (2003).