The Academy of American Franciscan History will host In the Footsteps of “the Twelve”: The 500th Anniversary of the Franciscan Arrival in Mexico, a major academic conference at Mission Santa Barbara taking place October 11–13, 2024. To learn more and see the conference program, visit aafh.org or contact Jeffrey Burns (acadafh@fst.edu).
Paolo Luca Bernardini (University of Insubria, Como, Italy) has co-authored with Karin Wiesner the first comprehensive biography of Georg Moenius, Georg Moenius: Un prete cattolico contro il nazionalsocialismo (1890–1953) (Mimesis Edizioni, 2024). Moenius, a Catholic priest from Upper Bavaria, was a major opponent of Nazi ideology, especially in his capacity of director-owner of Allgemeine Rundschau, a Munich weekly paper. After 1933, Moenius fled into exile and spent several years in the United States before returning home to die in obscurity in 1953.
The Boston C.S.J. Archives recently completed Throw Open the Windows! Digitizing the Experiences of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston During the Era of Vatican II, a project led by former CSJ archivist Katie McNally and current CSJ archivist Ava Doogue. The project digitized 237 tapes, including oral history interviews (1970s–1990s) and audio from the congregation’s chapter meetings (1968 and 1969). The recordings particularly shed light on the impact of the Second Vatican Council on religious communities. The project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation. Select audio is in the process of being made publicly available on the Boston Public Library’s Digital Commonwealth. A finding aid for the project can be viewed at csjboston.org and a rotating online exhibit is at bostoncsjarchives.omeka.net.
The Center for Research on Global Catholicism (CRGC) at St. Louis University has received a grant from the Missouri Humanities Council to support a new public humanities project, Sisters as City Builders. The grant will fund the creation of a digital exhibit on women’s missionary experiences in the 19th century and a public event consisting of a talk by an invited scholar specializing in the field of global Catholicism, a hands-on research lab, and a meet-and-greet reception for participants to engage in further discussion with scholars and archivists. This project is the work of the St. Louis Catholic Archives Collective, a partnership between the CRGC and archivists at independent local Catholic archives that aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of these archival collections. For additional information, visit stlouiscatholicarchivescollective.com.
Valentina Ciciliot (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) has published “The Catholic Charismatic Renewal and Pope Francis between Pastoral Openness and Ecclesiastical Centralization,” in The Pentecostal World (Routledge 2023), edited by Michael Wilkinson and Jörg Haustein.
Gessica Cosi’s upcoming book, ‘Reshaping’ Atlantic Connections: Ireland and Irish America 1917–1921, was published by Edward Everett Root Scholarly Publishers in July 2024. This study offers a new perspective on Irish America’s ideologies, politics, and geography from 1917 to 1921. Cosi (Canadian School of Florence) explores how diverse identities in the United States and across the Atlantic intertwined during Eamon de Valera’s 1919 mission, reshaping Irish and Irish American nationalisms and shedding new light on the Irish claim to nationhood in line with Wilsonian ideals of self-determination.
The Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University invites applications for its sixth annual competition for the New Scholar Essay Prize for Catholic Studies in the Americas. The center invites recent essays that offer cutting-edge research about Catholics and Catholicism in North, Central, or South America and/or the Caribbean. Current Ph.D. candidates who are ABD or those with a Ph.D. or Th.D. conferred no earlier than 2018 are eligible. Eligible essays are those published or accepted for publication between February 15, 2024, and February 15, 2025. The purpose of the prize is to advance, highlight, and support excellent scholarship pertaining to Catholicism in the Americas. The prize comes with a $1,500 award. More information can be found at the Curran Center website, and the submission deadline is February 15, 2025. Direct any questions to cacs@fordham.edu.
Maggie Elmore (Baylor University) began a new position as associate professor in Southwest borderlands history at Baylor University this fall. Her article “In the Shadow of the Law: The Hanigan Case and the Genesis of the Immigrant Rights Movement” was published in the September 2024 issue of the Journal of American History.
W. Clark Gilpin (University of Chicago, emeritus) shares that his book The Letter from Prison: Literature of Cultural Resistance in Early Modern England has been published by Pennsylvania State University Press, exploring a pivotal epoch in the evolution of a distinctive literary genre. Letters from prison testifying to firmly held ethical principles have a long history extending from antiquity to the present day. In the early modern era, the rise of printing houses helped turn such letters into a powerful form of political and religious resistance.
Daniel Graff (Notre Dame) participated in the Future of Work: Labour After Laudato Si’ conference in Rome, sponsored by the Vatican, including a papal audience. Graff introduced the Higgins Labor Program’s Just Wage Framework to a global group of stakeholders representing employers, unions, faith groups, and NGOs.
Gabrielle Guillerm has accepted an appointment as associate professor of American history at Sorbonne University in Paris. She is delighted to be back in her hometown. Above all, she is grateful for the 11 years she spent in the United States and the wonderful scholars, archivists, and Lakota colleagues she met there.
Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C. (Notre Dame) has published a blog post for Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History entitled “How the Catholic Church Drove Suburban Expansion Within and Outside New York City.” The post is a brief excerpt of his manuscript, “Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America,” which is forthcoming in 2025 from University of Chicago Press.
Jason S. Lantzer (Butler University) has published Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust: A History with DeGruyter Press. He also appeared in the History Channel documentary series How Disney Built America, which premiered earlier this year.
Hesburgh Libraries (Notre Dame) is marking the 100th anniversary of the historic Four Horsemen of Notre Dame with an exhibit exploring how Notre Dame leaders harnessed the unprecedented popularity and visibility of the 1924 football team to combat bigotry and promote a more inclusive America. A collaboration of the Hesburgh Libraries, Rare Books and Special Collections, and the University of Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is open to the public in 102 Hesburgh Library through January 31, 2025. Learn more at library.nd.edu/event/fall-exhibit-2024.
Carmen M. Mangion (Birkbeck, University of London) is pleased to announce the publication of “Faith, Feminism and Politics: The Inter-War Campaigning Strategies of St Joan’s Social and Political Alliance” in Modern British History.
John Seitz (Fordham University) shares that the project “Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Educational Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Clergy Sexual Abuse” has established a permanent digital archive. Sponsored by the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies and the Department of Theology at Fordham University, “Taking Responsibility” launched with an external grant in 2020. In its initial phase, the project supported 17 research teams from Jesuit universities on questions related to Jesuits and clergy abuse in the United States. The archive contains materials produced by the research teams as well as documents summarizing key findings and ongoing agendas. In addition, the archive houses links to webinars, news reports, and interviews associated with “Taking Responsibility.” The archive will continue to grow as the project evolves. It can be accessed through Fordham University’s Digital Collections Library.
Jason Springs (Notre Dame) has published Restorative Justice and Lived Religion: Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago in the Religion and Social Transformation series published by New York University Press. The book follows a ragtag band of restorative justice practitioners who are brothers and sisters of the Order of the Precious Blood and explores the community center they have built—along with their allies and accomplices—in Back of the Yards, a neighborhood at the heart of Chicago’s South Side. Based on nearly 10 years of site visits, in-depth interviews, participant observations, and relationship-building at the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation center, the book demonstrates how the distinctive moral and spiritual vision of restorative justice not only has the potential to challenge and transform, but also is being implemented in ways that are actively transforming mass incarceration in Chicago.
Brooke Tranten (de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, Notre Dame) defended her dissertation, “Arming the Naked Public Square: America’s Catholic Bishops Confront the Reagan Administration, 1980–1983” at Marquette University under the direction of Steven Avella.
Thomas Tweed’s (Notre Dame) article about conflict resolution in Northern Ireland, “Reimagining Troubled Pasts and Sustainable Futures: Religion and Post-Brexit Northern Ireland,” appeared earlier this year in Irish Studies in International Affairs. In 2025, Yale University Press will publish his new book, Religion in the Lands That Became America: A History.
Dennis Wieboldt (Notre Dame) has published “Civil Rights and Prophetic Indictment: A Discursive History of Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe’s ‘On The Interracial Apostolate’” in the Winter 2024 issue of the Journal of Catholic Social Thought; “Natural Law Appeals as Method of American-Catholic Reconciliation: Catholic Legal Thought and the Red Mass in Boston, 1941–1944” in the Fall 2023 issue of U.S. Catholic Historian; and “Christian History Meets Constitutional History: John Courtney Murray’s Augustinian Political Theology of the American Founding,” in the Summer 2024 issue of Horizons. He also contributed the chapter “Natural Law for the Laity: A Case Study in Catholic Education on the Airwaves” in Theology and Media(tion): Rendering the Absent Present (Orbis 2024), edited by Stephen Okey and Katherine Schmidt.
These announcements appear in the fall 2024 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.