Elliott Cramer

I am a historian of colonial America and the early United States. I began my PhD coursework at UC Berkeley in 2016 and followed my advisor, Prof. Mark Peterson, to Yale in Fall 2018. I expect to complete my degree in the spring of 2025.

 

My dissertation is based primarily on research in the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, and is essentially a comparative study of practices and institutions—church courts, clergy and lay discipline, religious societies, and parish landholding—in England and Maryland. I find that the colonial church’s internal administration, as well as its place within the constitution of the state, differed from English precedent in ways that have not previously been recognized. In broader terms, my research has led me to the conclusion that we should not think of Revolution-era “disestablishment” as a moment of separation between church and state, but as a moment when secular rulers re-negotiated the terms on which churches would be allowed to govern their members.

 

Here at Yale, I have served as a TF for six undergraduate courses, including most recently, “The Birth of Europe, 1000-1500” with Prof. Paul Freedman. In addition to my dissertation, I am currently working on an article that explains the legal mechanism whereby Anglican vestries in Maryland held property, and offers an estimate of how much land the church owned during the period from 1700 to 1820.