Podcast Summary: New Books Network – John Kuhn on “Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England”

Episode Date: March 27, 2026
Host: Jane Degenhardt
Guest: Professor John Kuhn, Binghamton University

Episode Overview

This episode features host Jane Degenhardt in conversation with Professor John Kuhn about his new book, “Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024). The discussion explores how the concept of “paganism” functioned as a flexible, often Christian-imposed umbrella category for non-Abrahamic religions. Kuhn’s book particularly investigates how the London commercial theater helped construct and recycle pagan religious images and rituals on stage, forging popular understanding and ethnographic knowledge of the ‘pagan’ through repeated theatrical set pieces and dramaturgical practices across the 17th century.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Book’s Origin and Approach

• Personal and Intellectual Genesis

  • The project emerged from Kuhn’s dissertation. His initial fascination began with a scene from Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter where Algonquian Indians perform a ritual remarkably similar to Roman altar scenes from earlier plays (03:48).
  • This led to questions about sources, theatrical conventions, and audience expectations:

    “Where is Ben getting the information to put this scene together? ... Is this fresh for this play? Where is the set piece coming from?” (04:23, Kuhn)

  • The inquiry expanded into other repeated set pieces: altar scenes, group suicides, triumphal parades, and conjurer scenes.

• Methodology and Scholarly Motivation

  • Kuhn is committed to “empathetic communing with the past,” reconstructing what the average 17th-century theatergoer may have understood culturally (06:38).
  • He emphasizes breadth over canonicity, engaging a wide array of both well-known and “really, really minor” plays (07:14).

Archival Research and Visual Culture

• Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship

  • The fellowship enabled Kuhn to explore prose genres that addressed paganism: ethnographies, apologetics, travel writing, and histories (09:11, 10:52).
  • Key surprise: Comparative “pagan” theorizing occurred in diverse contexts, not just systematic treatises.

• Images and Illustrations

  • The book integrates visual sources, including the cover image from Grotius’s Defence of the Christian Religion.
  • Kuhn notes that both stagecraft and elite prose works often “lump” disparate groups under “pagan” with homogenizing illustrations—e.g., a feathered American Indigenous figure representing all pagans (11:13).

Theatrical Archive and Analysis

• Cross-Century and Cross-Genre Focus

  • Kuhn avoids strict period boundaries and canonicity, instead tracking set pieces (altar scenes, suicides, triumphs, conjurers) across the 17th century (13:36).
  • Notably, these techniques were adapted from the ancient world to new colonial and African settings.

• Noteworthy Play Example: Philip Massinger

  • Massinger’s works, especially The City Madam, recycle the “Roman triumph” set piece in both ancient and contemporary (London merchant) settings.

    “Messinger is dumping that idea and that practice, like, into contemporary London and suggesting that some of the things that are going on in the kind of merchant classes are starting to look like this sort of barbaric ancient world practice.” (15:12, Kuhn)

Book Structure and Argument

• Organization Around Set Pieces

  • Each chapter traces a different theatrical ritual (e.g., altar, suicide, triumph, conjurer) across the century, emphasizing their persistence and adaptation (19:19).
  • The language and imagery developed by the Admiral’s Men in the 1590s became particularly enduring and influential across later English theater.

• Changing Attitudes and Colonial Context

  • As England’s colonial and slave-trading interests expanded, representations of pagan rituals became more negative—depicting their practitioners as cruel or false (23:41).

    “When pagans are killing themselves in those plays, they're like having visions of hell before they die... The stage got really invested in being like, this is not true.” (23:53, Kuhn)

  • The ‘pagan’ category also gained practical legal significance for colonial law and enslaving practices (25:51).

Contributions to Comparative Religion and Critical Race Studies

• Early Modern Comparative Religion
  • Kuhn pushes scholarly timelines back, showing that comparative religion existed in both elite and popular contexts well before the Enlightenment (26:47).
• Connections to Race
  • Drawing on Barbara Fields’s “racecraft,” Kuhn relates the invention of ‘pagan’ to processes that construct racial categories, but notes ‘pagan’ remained more flexible:

    “Paganism is not really a racial category. ... It's applied to the European past and the African present. ... a much more mutable, slippery label.” (28:16-28:52, Kuhn)

The Category’s Evolution in the 18th Century

• The late 17th century saw a shift in slave law from religious (non-Christian) to racial (Black) categories, reflecting colonial labor demands (29:05):

  “...their criteria for enslaveability used to be non Christian, and overnight they turn it into black, basically.” (29:05)

• ‘Pagan’ as a term of abuse intersected with class and social status as well as religion (31:02).

Scholarly Trajectory and Future Projects

• Kuhn’s ongoing research is turning towards material and technological histories—such as the use of featherwork and hammocks—and a projected book on the birch bark canoe as indigenous technology in colonial North America (33:36).

Memorable Advice for First-Time Authors

• Kuhn’s advice:

  “Pick the [project] that kind of you enjoy doing. ... Because that, that, that will stick with you even when other things might fade.” (36:54, Kuhn)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On pattern recognition and origins:

  “Once you start to notice something, you start to see it everywhere.” (06:06, Degenhardt)

• On the pleasure of research:

  “I do not mind reading large volumes of material that other people might find boring. And I just kind of love digging around in the weeds.” (06:57, Kuhn)

• On theatrical reenactment:

  “There are these really, really expensive and spectacular scenes of pagan religion. Like, what is the stage doing with them? What is their history? What are the politics?” (05:58, Kuhn)

• On legal significance:

  “The term and this idea of like a fourth religious category that’s an umbrella is like immensely useful for colonial law and for like, people who want to enslave other people, basically.” (25:51, Kuhn)

Suggested Listening (Key Segments)

• Book’s Origin Story: 03:48–06:06
• Methodology and Archive: 06:38–08:04
• Role of Visual Culture: 11:13–13:36
• Discussion of Massinger and Theatrical Set Pieces: 14:54–15:12
• Book’s Structure and Thematic Arcs: 19:19–22:53
• Changing Representations and Legal Ramifications: 23:41–25:51
• Comparative Religion and Race: 26:47–29:05
• Future Projects, Advice to Scholars: 32:49–37:55

Summary for New Listeners

Through this engaging and deeply researched conversation, Professor Kuhn and Jane Degenhardt illuminate the evolving, constructed nature of “paganism” in early modern England. Kuhn’s book demonstrates how the London stage not only reflected but actively shaped popular categories of religion and difference—often in the service of broader colonial and racial projects. Featuring close readings, archival discoveries, and reflection on current scholarly debates, this episode is an essential resource for anyone interested in early modern theater, the history of religion, colonial studies, or the politics of cultural categorization.