Ryan McIlhenny

Ryan McIlhenny is a cultural and intellectual historian, who holds a PhD from the University of California, Irvine, a cutting-edge research institution known for its work in Critical Theory and New Left Marxism. His scholarship centers on the origins of anti-slavery and religious intolerance in the wider Atlantic and Early American Republic in the long nineteenth century. He is the author of To Preach Deliverance to the Captives: Freedom and Slavery in the Protestant Mind of George Bourne (1780-1845), part of the Antislavery, Abolition, and Atlantic World series of Louisiana State University Press (2020). His explorations in the history of abolition have encouraged him to study the history of radicalism, the social and cultural consequences of economic systems, especially capitalism, and the unique contributions of American thinkers to the canon of western philosophy.

In the course of his career as a sojourning public intellectual, Dr. McIlhenny has become a passionate defender of the liberal arts, an approach to learning that invites students to see not only the modal diversity of creation and its ultimate dependence on the Creator but also the religious ground motive of being. The application of Reformational Philosophy to a liberal arts education is reflected in the way that Dr. McIlhenny coordinates a variety of interdependent disciplines—history, theology, philosophy, economics, sociology, and the arts—in his teaching. He has helped build liberal arts programs in both the United States and China.

You can learn more about his work here: https://ryanmcilhenny.academia.edu/