Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA — 2025

My review of Ruth Nelson's 'Our Lady of the World's Fair' has been published in the summer 2025 issue of the @achahistory.bsky.social's American Catholic Studies! Read here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/156/arti...

(above) Milwaukee, Wisconsin — 2025

I'm thrilled that my first book review--of John Nelson's Muddy Ground--has been published in the Middle West Review! muse.jhu.edu/issue/54929

I passed my comprehensive exams as a part of Notre Dame's PhD in History program this morning! I explored the fields central to my teaching and research interests: Catholicism in the U.S., the U.S. and the World, and Modern America. Thank you to my committee and my peers--now, on to my dissertation!

Pope Leo grew up in a Catholic enclave on the South Side of Chicago that essentially disappeared, part of a larger pattern that one historian calls "one of the great dramas of 20th century U.S. history." With Julie Bosman and the rest of the incredible Chicago bureau: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/u...

My brilliant doctoral advisor, Kathy Cummings, on Francis and the saints he canonized: www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/0...

Oak Park, Michigan, December 2024

Commonweal with my brilliant doctoral advisor's latest, on pilgrimage, tourism, and the 1950 Jubilee Year: www.commonwealmagazine.org/pilgrims-pre...

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. -FS Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, published 4/10/1925.

The ACHA writes to express its strong opposition to the recommended termination of tenured faculty in the departments of theology and religious studies, history, and other core areas of the humanities at St. Norbert College. achahistory.org/stnorbert

Happy 179th Birthday to the nations most underrated city - Milwaukee WI

If these cuts go through it would be awful for St Norbert's students and for the field of theology. The faculty in this department are doing critical work for the future of the church. What can the board and religious founders of St Norbert's be thinking? www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/e...

I'm so excited to TA for this course! youtu.be/ztcyjyhACgE?...

Menomonee Valley, Milwaukee — 2025

Congratulations again to our 2024 Award and Grant winners! These award and grant winners are being honored at the Presidential Luncheon starting now. #acha2025 #AHA25

ACHA President @anthonyb1939.bsky.social interviewed Film Director Martin Scorsese in an ACHA exclusive event at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. Be on the look out for the transcript of this conversation. He received the ACHA’s Distinguished Service Award. #ACHA2025

for the monochromatically inclined

new month, new teaching persona:

Last month's Dolan Seminar on Missionary Diplomacy at Notre Dame's Cushwa Center was truly a career highlight. What an honor to have scholars like Heather Curtis and Amy Greenberg engage so closely with my work. youtu.be/8SebpUInonU?...

"They are essentially claiming a First Amendment right for a Catholic university to not follow its own mission," ... "That is not so much a right to religious freedom as it is a right to hypocrisy."

"is it not a privilege for the Church historian to bring to light as much as possible the popular faces of the 'least important' and to reconstruct the history of their defeats and the oppressions they suffered, together with their human and spiritual riches...