mortiz053

Lauren Turek This past month, I have come across two pieces of information that may be of interest to the readers of this blog. The first is a call for papers from the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, which is holding a conference next year on Religion and Politics in Early America. The details are as follows: Call For Papers – Religion and Politics in Early America (Beginnings to 1820) St. Louis, March 1-4, 2018 Conference Website: https://sites.wustl.edu/religionpolitics2018/ Sponsored by: The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics The Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy The Society of Early Americanists St. Louis University Washington University in St. Louis Seeking Panel and Paper Proposals We seek proposals for panels and individual papers for the special topics conference on Religion and Politics in Early America, March 1-4, 2018, in St. Louis, Missouri. Individual papers are welcome, but preference will be given to completed panel submissions....

Emily Suzanne Clark Readers of the blog might remember that I like to post about teaching. A big part of my teaching is primary sources and that increasingly includes archives. I first blogged about taking a class into the Jesuit archives back in November 2015, shortly after having my American Christianities class work in the archives . That was my first time taking my class on an archival field trip, and since then I've taken four more classes back. I'm hooked, and it seems they are too. Many have told me that they hope the assignment remains on the syllabus for future classes. Two students digitizing photos, from spring 2016 Native American Religions. Back when I took my first class into the archives, I blogged and raved about Anthony Grafton and James Grossman's piece in The American Scholar about how student experiences in archives help them develop "habits of mind" and begin to form their scholarly selves. Now, when I take my class into the archives we'...

Catherine R. Osborne (for the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame) Eladio Bobadilla 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 Fr. Hesburgh's papers related to his work on the Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. (The next grant applications will be due October 1, so start thinking of topics now!) CO: What got you interested in this topic? EB: My interest in this topic is largely autobiographical. Immigration is part of my story and has shaped me and my worldview since I was a child. My father was, at various points in his life...

Andrea L. Turpin I love Mormon history. I have found a way to work it into literally all the courses I have ever taught. I am neither a Mormon nor a historian of Mormonism, but I've discovered that teaching the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints brings to life so many aspects of nineteenth-century American history in a way that students always find gripping. Specifically, recounting the development of the LDS church during this era provides a fresh way to present topics as diverse as racial prejudice, Western expansion, revivalism and the larger significance of Protestant theological debates, changing gender roles, anti-Catholic prejudice, the utopian impulse, the expansion and contraction of the franchise, and debates over religious freedom, among others. I teach in a history department, so an additional asset of Mormon history for me is that the church's formative years run from the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830 through the renouncing of po...

Karen Johnson Tim Neary's recent book Crossing Parish Boundaries: Race, Sports, and Catholic Youth in Chicago, 1914-1954 traces the decades of interracial contact between Chicago's youth in Bishop Bernard Sheil's Catholic Youth Organization (CYO).   Tim complicates the argument that working-class white ethnics were some the most anti-black people in the urban north at mid-century, situates black Catholics' experiences squarely in the Black Metropolis, illuminates how black Catholics created their own places, and speaks to the civil rights movement historiography, as it merges urban and religious history wonderfully.   Recently I interviewed Tim, and I have posted our conversation below.   You can also see a recording of Tim's recent talk the Cushwa Center here. KJ: I’m fascinated by your arguments that Sheil and black Catholics assumed that social change would come by working “within the system,” rather than challenging it.   Could you speak to this dynamic in ...

Jonathan Den Hartog I very much appreciated the just-concluded roundtable on Kyle Roberts' Evangelical Gotham . I found myself taking in the roundtable just as I was finishing reading the book.  So, in the spirit of an "audience comment," let me add one additional point that particularly struck me. I was much impressed by the way Roberts' focus on religion in New York City opened up consideration of the meaning of New York City on other levels--the national and the international. The book works as a fine-grained study of one particular place (Manhattan), expressed with even more particular details of congregations and individuals. Yet, by choosing New York, the book has situated its local story in a city where developments in local religious life could produce effects beyond its borders. One direction the City faced was westward, to the American continent. New York grew in economic and cultural significance throughout the nineteenth century, and its impact was energiz...