The American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA) has approved the creation of the Christopher J. Kauffman Prize in U.S. Catholic History, to be awarded to authors of monographs that provide new and challenging insights to the study of U.S. Catholic history. A gifted scholar, Kauffman (d. 2018) tirelessly advocated for the field of U.S. Catholic history. Over the course of his long and distinguished career, he authored 10 books and over 100 articles. He served as editor of U.S. Catholic Historian and as general editor for two series, Makers of the Catholic Community: Historical Studies of the Catholic People in America, 1789–1989 and American Catholic Identities: A Documentary History. The ACHA has not set a date to begin awarding the prize but aims to establish sufficient financial backing to fund the prize within two to three years. Visit achahistory.org to learn more.
Paolo L. Bernardini (University of Insubria) will begin an appointment in November 2021 as a fellow of the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study. He will complete a research project on the veritas filia temporis idea in the Renaissance and Baroque.
Shaun Blanchard is senior research fellow at the National Institute for Newman Studies in Pittsburgh, where he will research ecclesiology in the English-speaking Catholic world ca. 1770–1870.
Matthew Casey-Pariseault (Arizona State University) has joined the board of directors of the Women’s Ordination Conference (womensordination.org). A historian of religion in the Americas, Matt is especially interested in digging deeper into the histories of ordination equality struggles. Reach out (mpcasey1@asu.edu) if you would like to brainstorm a project.
Valentina Ciciliot (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) recently published “The Origins of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the United States: The Experience at the University of Notre Dame and South Bend (Indiana), 1967–1985,” in the volume Transatlantic Charismatic Renewal (Brill 2021).
Maureen K. Day (Franciscan School of Theology) earned honorable mention (category: Catholic Social Teaching) in the 2021 Catholic Media Awards for her book Catholic Activism Today (NYU 2020).
Tim Dulle Jr. (Fordham University) defended his dissertation, “‘A Question Making Time’: Corita Kent, the White Catholic Imagination, and American Catholicism,” in April 2021.
Maggie Elmore (Sam Houston State University) will spend the 2021–2022 academic year as a Bill and Rita Clements Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America at Southern Methodist University’s Clements Center for Southwest Studies. NYU Press will release her co-edited volume, Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945, in February 2022.
Fr. David Endres (Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Cincinnati) recently published A Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati: The Catholic Church in Southwest Ohio, 1821–2021. The book illuminates the rich story of Catholicism’s foundations and expansion from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River over the past 200 years.
Virginia Garrard (University of Texas, Austin) published a new book, New Faces of God in Latin America, with Oxford University Press in December 2020.
Sr. Mary Agnes Greiffendorf, O.P. (The Catholic University of America) successfully defended her dissertation, “Preparing American Women Religious for the Teaching Apostolate in the 21st Century: Factors Influencing Programs of Study for Sisters and Their Experiences in the Teaching Apostolate,” and graduated with a Ph.D. in Catholic educational leadership from the Catholic University of America in May 2021. The qualitative study explores the ways the leaders of three American congregations of women religious have prepared their sisters for the teaching apostolate both in the past and the present.
Bill Issel (San Francisco State University) has published the second book in his “The War at Home” series of WWII novels. In the new book, Traitors (Carleton Street 2021), Irish and Italian detectives team up with a Jewish FBI agent to investigate the murder of a prominent German American who had been a leading San Francisco supporter of Father Charles Coughlin’s National Union of Social Justice. Bill has also published a memoir, Baptized on the Fourth of July: A Catholic Boyhood in San Francisco (Carleton Street 2021).
Theresa Keeley (University of Louisville) received the 2020 Juan E. Méndez Award for Human Rights in Latin America from Duke University’s Human Rights Center for her first book, Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America (Cornell 2020).
Mary Grace Kosta, archivist for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada, won two awards this year: the James J. Talman Award from the Archives Association of Ontario and the Sister M. Claude Lane, O.P., Memorial Award from the Society of American Archivists. The congregation also launched a new website (www.csjarchive.org) for their consolidated archives earlier this year. It contains downloadable publications of interest to other archives, such as a policy manual and processing manual, photographs, videos, oral history recordings, finding aids, a timeline, and other resources concerning the history of the congregation.
Suzanne Marie Krebsbach has published “Anne Rossignol, Madame Dumont, and Dr. John Schmidt Junior: Community and Accommodation in Charleston, 1790–1840,” in Select Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, and “The Assassin Limolean: Political and Religious Conflict in South Carolina,” in The South Carolina Historical Magazine.
Rose Luminiello will publish the co-edited volume Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community with Rowman & Littlefield in December 2021.
Elsa B. Mendoza recently joined Middlebury College as an assistant professor of history and in spring 2022 will be a faculty fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. With Adam Rothman, she recently published the co-edited book Facing Georgetown’s History, a volume that examines the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery.
Patrick D. Milhoan became head archivist for the Hesburgh Libraries in April 2021. Prior to arriving at Hesburgh Libraries in 2017, Patrick had completed stints with the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the archives of the Society of the Cincinnati, and the Ford’s Theatre Society.
Ryan P. Murphy recently joined the faculty of Chestnut Hill College’s Center for Education, Advocacy, and Social Justice as an assistant professor of sociology.
Todd Ream (Taylor University) recently published Hesburgh of Notre Dame: An Introduction to His Life and Work (Lexington 2021), a volume collecting the most important public addresses of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. (1917–2015).
Jonathan Riddle concluded three years at Wheaton College (Illinois) and will begin this fall as Visiting Professor of History and Great Books at Pepperdine University.
Matteo Sanfilippo (Scalabrinian Historical Institute) announces the release of the second volume in the institute’s series. The new volume contains numerous letters about New York in the late 19th century. Like all the institute’s publications, it is available free of charge at www.scalabriniani.org/istituto-storico/.
The Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill announce the launch of an interactive, searchable online digital archive featuring oral histories of federation sisters. “Charity Speaks” pulls together more than 60 oral history entries from nine congregations in thematic categories (Women of the World, Nursing & Healthcare Heroes, Angels of Education, The Modern Nun, and Witness to History) to unite the charity charism. The following women religious archives contributed to the project: Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill; Sisters of Charity of New York; Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati; Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth; Sisters of Charity of Nazareth; Sisters of Charity of New Jersey; Sisters of Charity of Halifax; Daughters of Charity, Province of St. Louise (Emmitsburg); Daughters of Charity, Province of St. Elizabeth Ann (Los Altos Hills). The website is accessible at www.scfederationarchives.org.
Br. Stanley Rother Wagner, O.S.B. (Saint Meinrad Archabbey) began an oral history project entitled “Counted as One: A History of the Brothers of Saint Meinrad Archabbey.”
Charles K. Wilber (University of Notre Dame) recently published two books: Life as a Pilgrimage: Faith, Economics, and Social Justice (Corby 2021) and Was the Good Samaritan a Bad Economist? (Lexington 2021).
Deanna Witkowski (University of Pittsburgh) recently published Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul (Liturgical Press 2021), a biography that explores the renowned jazz composer and pianist’s spiritual journey and eventual conversion to Catholicism.
These announcements appear in the fall 2021 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.