About
Travis DeCook serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of English within Carleton University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. His scholarship bridges Early Modern literature, Religion and Theology, Intellectual and Cultural History, and critical examinations of Secularity and Modernity through biblical studies.
Educational background:
- B.A. Honours, University of Victoria
- M.A., University of Victoria
- Ph.D., University of Toronto
DeCook's research critically investigates how sixteenth and seventeenth-century accounts of the Bible's origins—not merely its content—informed early modern political theology and secular thought. His award-winning monograph The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2021) demonstrates how writers exploited tensions between the Bible's divine and human dimensions to construct narratives about its transmission, subsequently deploying these for arguments about societal organization. This work directly challenges conventional genealogies of secular modernity.
Analysis of his 15 most recent publications (2002-2024) reveals persistent engagement with Henry Vaughan, Hobbes, Bacon, and Marlowe through lenses of biblical materiality, eschatology, and theopoetics. His scholarship consistently interrogates how scriptural interpretation shapes political concepts while exposing the theological underpinnings of supposedly secular frameworks.
Scientific awards:
- FASS Research Award for Junior Faculty (2010)
- FASS Research Grant (2010)
- SSHRC Institutional Research Grant (2009)
- Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006)
DeCook actively mentors graduate students including Ali Ahmed (DRP: 'Poetic Truth: Lewis, Barfield, and the Karamazovs') and Christopher Jenkins (MA thesis: 'The Cross Pressure of Flannery O'Connor'). He teaches core graduate courses—ENGL 6002 (Doctoral Proseminar), ENGL 5005 (M.A. Seminar), and ENGL 6000 (The Production of Literature)—while maintaining an active conference presence at venues like the Renaissance Society of America and Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. His grant history reflects sustained institutional and national funding support for interdisciplinary biblical scholarship.
No dedicated research laboratories or formal team structures are documented in available materials.
