Thinking With the Past

Polly Ha is associate professor in the Duke Divinity School and the Department of History in Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, and a 2026-27 Provost Faculty Fellow. She traces her fascination with intellectual history to an unexpected discovery as an undergraduate: a hidden world of dissent, forbidden manuscripts and the birth of independence. That early research led to questions about freedom, religion and the uses of the past that continue to animate her work at Duke.

Q&A

What first got you interested in this field?

I grew up in California. Suddenly, as an undergraduate, I found myself immersed in a new culture across the country. I was curious about early New England history. It felt so foreign. My parents were immigrants from South Korea in the 1970s. 

Before I knew it, I was digging up an underworld of Puritan dissent and finding manuscripts that were not supposed to exist. Some were so seditious that they were encrypted in code. This got me thinking in new ways about everything from freedom and religion to how we inhabit time and think with the past.

How would you describe your main area of focus?

I’m into the history of ideas and institutions and their social impact, mostly in the English Renaissance, Reformation and Revolution.

You have a book coming out soon. What’s something you particularly enjoyed about working on it? 

“The Future of Freedom” started out as a bottom-up history of the English Revolution. I was peering into some of the earliest debates over “independence” in the English-speaking world. 

I’ve enjoyed putting that empirical history into conversation with the 21^st century. Some people see transhumanism and current futurist thought as rooted in medieval apocalypticism. But a lot of our current thinking is still dominated by Enlightenment assumptions. My book finds a more pluralistic world. 

Men, women and even adolescents were worried about their futures. They were stretching the boundaries of freedom. They were diversifying their thinking by drawing on medieval Hebrew-Arabic sources. And they were adding new criteria, like time and tempo, into their definitions. 

I love how this “historical pluralism” helps us understand the history of independence in a richer way: it is an empirical reality that invites a whole disciplinary approach and way of reading. It resonates with wider work on pluralism at Duke and can fuel our current thinking. 

Why did you choose Duke? 

I was told that interdisciplinarity was part of Duke’s DNA. I wasn’t sure if it was too good to be true. But Duke over-delivered. Interdisciplinarity was embedded deep in the culture. I found infrastructures and superhighways for collaboration everywhere. 

Joining Duke Divinity immediately put me in touch with scholars working across the university, from the arts to medicine and the humanities. The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is second to none in its richness and range. 

Stepping in as a faculty director for the undergraduate program Transformative Ideas has also felt like an interdisciplinary dream. 

Could you tell us more about Transformative Ideas? 

Transformative Ideas was designed to bridge across disciplines and differences, and to connect conversations in the classroom with residential life. We have a cluster of classes concentrated in the fall semester of the sophomore year. 

We also have an LLC dorm, and a house course, that anyone can join beyond their second year. The students in our dorm host regular movie nights and guest speakers. We also partner with others to host events, colloquia and public lectures on enduring questions that cut across different times and cultures.

Do you have any advice for faculty regarding teaching and mentoring?

I’ve had so many exceptional mentors. Each of them helped me to stretch beyond the limitations I imposed on myself.

I try to do the same, but it can be tricky, because our students tend to put so much pressure on themselves. I think giving them space to see the long game can go a long way. When students get a chance to step back, they sometimes see more of a horizon, and I feel like I’m just feeding off their energy at that point. So much synergy and joy can come from seeing the bigger picture!

What advice would you give to new faculty members?

Take the opportunity to co-teach! Some of my favorite experiences have been teaching with colleagues who have different teaching styles, interests and ways of thinking. 

There are so many classes I wish I could take at Duke. I love it when students share insights from other seminars. What better way to bring all these ideas together than to co-teach a class?

What’s something you enjoy doing for fun or relaxation?