Professor Grasso grew up in Connecticut and earned his PhD at Yale, later teaching at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. From 2000 - 2013 he was the editor of William and Mary Quarterly - the leading journal of early American history.  More recently, Grasso was the Pullen Professor of History at William & Mary. His latest books are “Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War” (Oxford University Press, 2018), which won the SHEAR Best Book Prize, and “Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso” (Oxford University Press, 2021). For the latter, he also developed a website, which includes a “graphic history” version of Kelso’s story. 

At Brown, Grasso hopes to continue to broaden and deepen his work as a historian of culture, politics, and religion in North America before 1900.