Rosa Bruno-Jofré (Queen’s University) shares details of recent publications. With Michael Attridge and Jon Igelmo Zaldívar, she co-edited Rethinking Freire and Illich: Historical, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives (University of Toronto Press, 2023). She contributed the chapter “Juan Eduardo García-Huidobro: educación popular y la ampliación de lo político” in Juan Eduardo García-Huidobro, Educación, Política y Fe para la Justicia Social (Universidad Alberto Hurtado Ediciones, 2024). She also co-authored with Ana Jofré the 2024 Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education’s entry on “Early Jesuit Visions of Education,” as well as a corresponding website: theirgroup.org/Jesuits.
The Catholic Record Society is delighted to announce the publication of the latest in its monograph series, Lay Catholic Societies in Twentieth Century Britain (Boydell & Brewer, 2025), edited by Maria Power (University of Oxford) and Jonathan Bush (University of Durham). Learn more by searching for the title at boydellandbrewer.com.
Gessica Cosi (Canadian School of Florence) is pleased to share that her new book, Reshaping Atlantic Connections: Ireland and Irish America 1917–1921, was published in July 2024 by Edward Everett Root Publishers (eerpublishing.com) as part of their Irish Studies series. The book uses the mission to the United States of American-born Irish leader Eamon de Valera from June 1919 to December 1920 to explore the relationship between Ireland and Irish America. It argues that, based on de Valera’s mission, neither can be understood as separate entities. The book offers fresh perspective on the nature of the diaspora and its political dimensions while critically examining de Valera’s connections with various Irish networks across America. The study moves beyond a traditional focus on the Northeast and Midwest and offers insights into Irish American identities and nationalist ideologies during and after America’s entry into World War I.
Ian Delahanty’s book, Embracing Emancipation: A Transatlantic History of Irish Americans, Slavery, and the American Union, 1840–1865 (Fordham, 2024), has received the Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize for best book in Irish American history from the American Conference for Irish Studies. Research for Embracing Emancipation was supported by a Hibernian Research Award.
Maggie Elmore (Baylor University) has received a Project Grant for Researchers (2025–26) from the Louisville Institute.
Daniel Gorman Jr. is currently a postdoctoral associate for the University of Rochester’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, affiliated with the Department of History. His current project is a history of religious inclusion and exclusion at the university. Dan would like to hear from other scholars who are studying antisemitic and anti-Catholic admissions quotas in higher education (contact dgormanj@ur.rochester.edu).
The Department of History at the University of Illinois Chicago congratulates Joshua Hoxmeier on a successful defense in 2024 of his dissertation, “Reconstructing Siege Mentality: The History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska since 1960.” Hoxmeier’s research explored key factors that led the Diocese of Lincoln’s success during the past 50 years while most other dioceses struggled. Hoxmeier is a visiting assistant professor of history at Utah Valley University.
Scott Keefer, archivist for the Daughters of Charity in Emmitsburg, Maryland, shares news of the launch of a website developed with DePaul University’s Vincentian Studies Institute. The site will make available the full collection of Seton family manuscripts housed in Maryland. A first batch is now online, with more to follow at via.library.depaul.edu/seton_family_papers.
John McGreevy’s Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis (W. W. Norton) will be published this spring in French translation from Desclée de Brouwer.
Monica L. Mercado has been promoted to associate professor at Colgate University, effective July 1, 2025. Her newest essay on Catholic material culture, “The Value of Women’s Things,” was published in November 2024 as part of the Collecting Religion project organized and edited by James S. Bielo (Northwestern University) and Matthew Hayes (Duke University). Learn more at collectingreligion.wordpress.com.
Michelle Nickerson (Loyola University Chicago) announces the publication of her new book, Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Spiritual Criminals examines the relationship between 1960s American radicalism and Catholicism through the story of peace activists who raided a draft board in 1971. Two grants from the Cushwa Center supported this project.
Notre Dame Press has published Rev. Robert J. Miller’s Faith of the Fathers: The Comprehensive History of Catholic Chaplains in the Civil War. The book examines the lives of all 126 Catholic priest-chaplains who served during the Civil War, risking their lives to bring faith and hope to one of the darkest periods of American history.
Harvard University Press has published James M. O’Toole’s For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America.
Elizabeth Pérez (University of California, Santa Barbara) was awarded the inaugural Leonard Norman Primiano Book Prize on Vernacular Catholicism in March 2024 for The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract (Cambridge University Press, 2023). The American Folklore Society’s Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section established the Primiano Book Prize to recognize new research in vernacular Catholicism and to commemorate the life and work of distinguished scholar Leonard Norman Primiano (1957–2021). According to the American Folklore Society, The Gut “explores a lesser known and undervalued aspect of lived religious practices and cosmologies (the gut) from which to articulate and engage with a wider, complex cosmological whole, including with aspects of vernacular Catholicism.”
Jonathan D. Riddle (Pepperdine University) created a health humanities minor. Launching in fall 2025, the minor will prominently feature courses on religion and health.
Sean Rost (State Historical Society of Missouri) has completed a new book titled Catching Hell from All Quarters: Anti-Klan Activists in Interwar Missouri, slated for publication by the University of Missouri Press in June 2025.
The Turkish translation of Thomas Tweed’s Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) recently appeared: Thomas A. Tweed, Din, trans. Deniz Keskin (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2024). So did Tweed’s chapter in a volume on the geography of religion: “Geography and Religious Studies: Insights Gained, Opportunities Missed, and Collaborations Proposed,” in Handbook of the Geographies of Religion, edited by Lily Kong, Orlando Woods, and Justin K. H. Tse (Springer, 2024).
Rev. Robert Wright, O.M.I. (Oblate School of Theology) has received the Presidio La Bahia Award for his book Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain’s Northern Frontier, published by Texas Tech University Press in 2023. The prize recognizes excellence in research and preservation efforts pertaining to the Spanish Colonial period in the history and heritage of Texas.
These announcements appear in the spring 2025 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.