About

Photo credit: Melissa Cooperman

Tom Simpson teaches about religion, ethics, philosophy, and human rights at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA.

Dr. Simpson is the author of the award-winning book American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). He is also the assistant managing director of Čuvaj Se / Take Care, a literary human rights nonprofit dedicated to supporting and amplifying survivors of war and trauma, especially from Bosnia and Herzegovina; he is the literary interviews editor for American Microreviews and Interviews; and he is a contributing editor for Tar River Poetry.

As a hobby, he also makes “Cards for Humanity” — blank greeting cards featuring his original photography — which you can purchase here.

Born and raised in Olean, New York, he earned his Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia, where he specialized in modern U.S. religious history. From 2002 to 2004, he directed Emory University’s “Journeys of Reconciliation” program, an interdisciplinary travel program focused on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding. At Phillips Exeter Academy, he coaches baseball, has chaired the Martin Luther King Day Committee, chaperoned and taught for the school’s term abroad program in Stratford-upon-Avon, and teaches courses on human rights, the Holocaust, Islam, existentialist literature and philosophy, as well as a course he designed on religion, global feminisms, and film.

His literary essays about postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina have been featured in the Canadian literary magazine Numéro Cinq, and his literary reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Tar River Poetry, The Iowa Review Online, and The Kenyon Review Online. His other scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in Religion & American Culture, Church History, and The Journal of the American Academy of Religion; the edited collection of essays Perspectives on the Social Gospel; and online in Oslobodjenje, the Religion in American History and the American Society of Church History blogs, jmbg.org, and sbiscevic.com.

His cv is here:

Simpson CVDownload

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs that appear on this blog have been taken by, and are copyright of, the author. They are unedited. The views expressed on this blog are not intended to represent the views of Phillips Exeter Academy, its faculty, or its officers.