Terryl L. Givens was born in upstate New York, raised in the American southwest, and did his graduate work in Intellectual History (Cornell) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. UNC Chapel Hill, 1988), working with Greek, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and English languages and literatures. As Professor of Literature and Religion, and the James A. Bostwick Professor of English at the University of Richmond, he teaches courses in Romanticism, nineteenth-century cultural studies, and the Bible and Literature. He has published in literary theory, British and European Romanticism, Mormon studies, and intellectual history.

Dr. Givens has authored and edited several books, including (with Phil Barlow) The Oxford Handbook to Mormonism (forthcoming 2015); Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought (Oxford 2014); The Columbia Sourcebook of Mormonism in America (with Reid Neilson, Columbia 2014); Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism (with Matthew Grow, Oxford 2011); When Souls had Wings: Pre-Mortal Life in Western Thought (Oxford 2010); The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2009); Joseph Smith: Reappraisals After Two Centuries (with Reid Neilson, Columbia 2008); People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture (Oxford 2007); By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford 2003); The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (Oxford 1997; revised 2013); Current projects include volume 2 of the History of Mormon Thought and a history of the Pearl of Great Price. He has also published two books with his wife Fiona: The God Who Weeps(Shadow Mountain, 2012) and The Crucible of Doubt (Deseret 2014). He lives in Montpelier, Virginia.

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