Secondary reading
To introduce yourself to the key ideas, read Critchley (2024), McGinn (2006), Woods (1980), the introductions to Hollywood and Beckman (2012) and Fanous and Gillespie (2009). You are welcome to email me over the summer with any questions on introductory reading.
General reading
Walter Holden Capps and Wendy M. Wright, Silent Fire: An Invitation to Western Mysticism (Harper Row, 1978)
Simon Critchley, On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy (Profile Books, 2024)
Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Jonathan Garb, A History of Kabbalah (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
David Bentley Hart, All Things are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life (Yale University Press, 2025)
Amy Hollywood, Acute Melancholia and Other Essays: Mysticism, History, and the Study of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016)
Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Arthur Holder, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (Blackwell, 2005)
Edward Howells and Peter Tyler, Sources of Transformation (Contiuum, 2010)
Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Philip Leonard, ed., Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and Literature (Palgrave, 2000)
Glenn Alexander Magee, The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Paul Marshall, Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Cristina Mazzoni, Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture (Cornell University Press, 1996)
Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (Random House, 2006)
Mark A. Mcintosh, The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Peter O'Leary, Thick and Dazzling Darkness: Religious Poetry in a Secular Age (Columbia University Press, 2018)
Gabriella Samuel, The Kabbalah Handbook (Penguin, 2007)
E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE- 66 CE (Fortress Press, 2016)
Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (Schocken, 1971)
Laura Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers (Paulist Press, 2001)
Charles Taylor, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment (Belknap, 2024)
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Richard Woods, O. P., Understanding Mysticism (Image Books, 1980)
History
Bernard McGinn's multi-volume history of Christian mysticism, The Presence of God, is a famously brilliant (and very detailed) study of the field (see individual volume titles below). You do not need to read these books! But you may wish to use them as a reference point for various historical moments on the module. The Foundations of Mysticism, the first book in the series, offers an excellent overview of the field and ends by summarising the rest of the series particularly the modern age. Modern Mystics (2023) is a standalone introduction to twentieth-century mystical writing.
The Foundations of Mysticism (Crossroad, 1991)
The Growth of Mysticism (Crossroad, 1994)
The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350) (Crossroad, 1998)
The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany (1300-1500) (Crossroad, 2005)
The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350-1550) (Crossroad, 2013)
Mysticism in the Reformation (1500-1650) (Crossroad, 2017)
Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain (1500-1650) (Crossroad, 2017)
The Persistence of Mysticism in Catholic Europe: France, Italy, and Germany 1500-1675 (Crossroad, 2020)
The Crisis of Mysticism: Quietism in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Italy, and France (Crossroad, 2021)
Modern Mystics: An Introduction (Herder and Herder, 2023)