News

Chamberlain received a 2016 Research Travel Grant to study American Catholics’ interest in contemporary “religious icons” the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, and Elie Wiesel.

Read More about Global religious icons in the American cultural imagination: A conversation with Julie Chamberlain

Davis received funding for research for her book in progress, American Converts: Religion and Identity Since World War II. She recently visited the Notre Dame Archives to consult materials on Clare Boothe Luce, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton.

Read More about Meet Research Travel Grant recipient Rebecca L. Davis

Peter Cajka and Benjamin Wetzel will join the Cushwa Center for research appointments beginning in July.

Read More about Cushwa announces postdocs for 2017–2018

We recently sat down with Research Travel Grant recipient Stephen Koeth, C.S.C., about his dissertation research on the postwar suburbanization of American Catholics. Stephen, a Holy Cross priest, is a doctoral candidate in history at Columbia University. His writing has appeared in The Journal of Church and State and U.S. Catholic Historian.

Read More about Five questions on Catholics and suburbanization with Stephen Koeth

Eladio Bobadilla is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history at Duke University. His dissertation is entitled “‘One People Without Borders’: The Chicano Roots of the Immigrants Rights Movement, 1954–1994,” and explores how Mexican Americans, long ambivalent and even opposed to undocumented immigration, came to see themselves and the undocumented as “one people.” He was awarded a 2016 Theodore M. Hesburgh Travel Grant to consult Father Hesburgh’s papers related to his work on the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy.

Read More about Five questions with Eladio Bobadilla on immigration and Catholic history

The Cushwa Center is pleased to announce the recipients of its annual grants and awards. Across the center's four programs, a record 25 scholars have accepted funding offers for a variety of research projects. Funds will support travel to Notre Dame's University Archives as well as to research sites in Charlotte, Philadelphia, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Rome, Italy.

Read More about Cushwa Center announces funding for 25 researchers in 2017

On February 10, the Cushwa Center and Play Like a Champion Today welcomed historian Timothy Neary to Notre Dame for a lecture on Bishop Bernard Sheil’s founding of the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO). After his presentation, a panel explored Bishop Sheil’s relevance for the mission of Catholic sports programs today. More than 30 youth sports leaders from 20 cities traveled to South Bend to participate.

Read More about Video: Timothy Neary and panelists discuss Bishop Sheil’s vision for Catholic youth sports

Maureen Wangard, who recently received her Ph.D. in higher education administration, took an unusual and timely direction in the interdisciplinary research for which she received the Cushwa Center’s support in summer 2016. Her Research Travel Grant, named for Notre Dame President Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., allowed her to visit Notre Dame and explore the University Archives for 1960s documents relevant to Rev. Paul Reinert, S.J. This long-time president of Saint Louis University, who collaborated frequently with Father Hesburgh, joined with him in key initiatives to shape the future of governance for Catholic universities, Wangard says. She studied Father Reinert’s legacy of leadership in her dissertation research and now is expanding and refocusing her work as a biography of the Jesuit. Her book is intended for publication in 2018, when Saint Louis University will celebrate its bicentennial year.…

Read More about Visiting researcher studies collaboration of Father Hesburgh and SLU president Paul Reinert, S.J.

Thomas P. Lynch Thomas P. Lynch, a poet and funeral director with roots in Ireland and Michigan, combined reflections on life and death with tributes to two recently deceased Irish poets when he spoke at Notre Dame on September 9, 2016. The occasion was the Cushwa Center’s annual Hibernian Lecture, focused this year on the work of Seamus Heaney and Dennis O’Driscoll, both of whom Lynch considered from his perspective as an Irish-American writer who deals professionally with death and dying. He honored the two masters of multiple genres, who died in 2013 and 2012, respectively, by recalling their inspiration for his own writing.…

Read More about From Ireland and Michigan, an Irish-American Poet Echoes Insights of Heaney and O’Driscoll

Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, begins her term on Jan. 6 as president of the American Catholic Historical Association for 2017. Cummings, an associate professor of American studies and history, rose to the leadership position during the association’s annual conference in Denver.…

Read More about Cushwa Center Director Cummings to Lead Catholic Historian Group

Alexandria Griffin, a Ph.D. candidate at Arizona State University, received a 2016 research travel grant to utilize Notre Dame’s University Archives in probing “intersections of race, gender, and celibacy.” Her dissertation proposal aimed to illuminate the experiences of African American communities of Catholic priests and nuns—and of African American Shakers—during the 19th century. Heather Grennan Gary, the Cushwa Center’s communications and outreach specialist, interviewed Griffin about her on-campus research in May 2016. This inquiry, Griffin explained, could provide new insights into African American perceptions of particular, prescribed religious traditions.…

Read More about Race, Celibacy, and Religion in the 19th Century: A Conversation with Alexandria Griffin

Stephen Andes, an assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University and author of The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920–1940, received a Cushwa Center research travel grant to utilize Notre Dame’s University Archives in early October 2016. He supplemented his previous international research with unique insights into Mexican Catholic Action and U.S. perspectives to advance his work on a project titled “Catholic Vagabond: The Transnational Life and Times of Sofia del Valle.” His visit to Notre Dame enriched his biography of Sofia del Valle, whose life illuminates the early phases of Latin American Catholic women’s activism. Andes explores in her story various aspects of gender, race, lay Catholicism, Church history, and broader historical trends from a transnational perspective.…

Read More about Grant Recipient Foregrounds Catholic Women's History in "Transnational" Activism

African American Catholics are the focus of Black Catholic History Month, celebrated every November. This year’s focus has been extended and energized at Notre Dame as the University prepares major new resources for ongoing studies of religious experiences and social contexts highlighted during this month.…

Read More about Notre Dame Gains Scholarly Resources for Black Catholic History Month and Beyond

The Cushwa Center invites interested scholars to submit proposals for papers dealing with any aspect of the presence in the Eternal City of individuals as well as communities originating from present-day England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, English- and French-speaking Canada, and the United States.

Read More about Call for Papers: North Atlantic Catholic Communities in Rome, 1622-1939

In his new book, American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global (Princeton University Press), McGreevy uses those individual religious experiences and others as a gateway to a larger narrative. The book traces how the religious order grew from 600 men in 1814 to roughly 17,000 men a century later. McGreevy argues that their odyssey of expulsion (by European nationalists worried about excessive Jesuit loyalty to the papacy) and reconstruction (as Jesuits launched a counterculture centered around parishes, schools, and universities) powerfully shaped modern history.

Read More about In new book, Arts and Letters dean reveals Jesuits’ impact on global history

Davis Rebecca Berru Davis is one of nearly 50 scholars presenting research at the upcoming Conference on the History of Women Religious (HWR), a triennial gathering that runs from June 26-29 at Santa Clara University. Davis studies women artists of the early Liturgical Movement in the United States, from 1932 to 1962. She just completed two years at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, where she was a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow. At HWR she will present a talk about Sister Helene O’Connor, O.P., titled “Liturgical Art: An Apostolate and Pedagogy For Artists and Educators.” She recently spoke with Heather Grennan Gary about her work.…

Read More about An interview with Rebecca Berru Davis

The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism has named five inaugural recipients of the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Research Travel Grant program, a initiative created to support projects that consider the legacy of Father Hesburgh, late president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame.    

Read More about New Hesburgh Research Travel Grant program names first five recipients

Thomas J. Sugrue, professor of social and cultural analysis and history at New York University, delivered the annual Cushwa Center Lecture, entitled "Beyond the Catholic Ghetto: Integrating Catholicism and Modern American History" on April 28, 2016.

Read More about Video of the 2016 Cushwa Center Lecture by Tom Sugrue now online

On April 16, 2016, more than 80 participants gathered at the Morris Inn for the Seminar in American Religion. The topic of this semester’s Seminar was Mark Noll’s In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (Oxford University Press, 2015). Noll, a longtime friend and collaborator of the Cushwa Center, served as the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame before retiring in May 2016. He has authored, edited, or co-edited over 50 books, including America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln…

Read More about Seminar in American Religion explores Mark Noll's book on the Bible and early American life

On March 29, Colin Barr presented a lecture on the global networks that connected Irish Catholic missionary sisters in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Barr’s lecture was based on research for his forthcoming book, Ireland’s Empire, which examines how missionaries from Erin fostered a distinctive “Hiberno-Roman” Catholic identity in the English-speaking world.

Read More about Lecture on Irish missionary sisters highlights the links that fostered a distinctive Irish Catholicism around the globe