David Como

This page reflects a scholar's association with the Folger Institute.

Long-term fellowship

"Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War" (ACLS/Burkhardt Fellow, 2011–2012)

This project seeks to illuminate the origins and nature of the most radical species of parliamentarian political and religious agitation that appeared during the English civil war of the 1640s. Drawing on a wide range of manuscript and print sources, and exploiting new digital technologies to unravel the complicated world of civil war underground print, the study aims to provide a new narrative of the civil-war period. In the process, it explores and explains the emergence of many of the more strikingly novel intellectual currents of the times, offering, for instance, a new analysis of the origins of the Leveller agitation (by some accounts the first democratic political movement in post-classical western history). More generally, it aims to help explain how and why the English civil war mutated into a revolution.

Scholarly Programs

Session Leader, Where Was Political Thought in England, c. 1600–1642? (Symposium, 2013–2014)

Chair, Plenary on The Politics of Religion, at An Anglo-American History of the KJV (Conference, 2011–2012)