Fellows

Catholic Studies Writing Fellows at Boston College Libraries

This fellowship program – of more than 40 scholars from 6 countries – gathers remotely each month for a discussion of a pre-circulated work in progress. 

Each year, as a capstone to the discussions, the CHRI hosts interested fellows for a one-day, in-person workshop.

For further information, please email at chri@bc.edu.

Fall 2025

Tuesday, September 30

Presenter: Seth Meehan, Boston College

Introductions; Introduction to the Catholic Historical Research Initiative at Boston College Libraries

Thursday, October 23

Presenter: Brian Clites, Case Western University

Surviving Soul Murder

Working manuscript’s introduction and first chapter, with the larger project examining the traditions and Catholic rituals that have enabled American survivors to transform their suffering into a robust agenda of reforms to change the Catholic Church and reshape American laws on child abuse.

Commentators: Catherine O’Donnell, Arizona State University

Kathy Cummings, University of Notre Dame

Guest:  Jennifer Graber, University of Texas

Tuesday, November 18

Presenter: Matthew Cressler, Independent Scholar

Catholics and the Making of MAGA: How an Immigrant Church Became America’s Law and Order Faith (under contract with HarperCollins)

Working manuscript’s preface and introduction (on Trump’s second inauguration and Catholic presence in contemporary rightwing politics; argument: a distinctly Catholic tradition of order—with an emphasis on obedience to authority and hierarchical social arrangements—has shaped American rightwing politics for over a century)

Commentators: Gabrielle Guillerm, Sorbonne Université

Kate Dugan, Springfield College

Guest: Charlie Gallagher, SJ, Boston College

Thursday, December 18

Presenter: Laura Masur, Catholic University of America

“‘Members of Jesus Christ’: The African foundations of manor house Catholicism”

Working manuscript’s chapter on the development of Catholic congregations during the “Manor house” period in Maryland, 1704 to 1776

Commentators: Tricia Pyne, Associated Archives at St. Mary’s Seminary & University

Elsa Mendoza, Middlebury College

Guest: Maura Jane Farrelly, Brandeis University

Spring 2026

Thursday, January 29

Presenter: David Roach, Campbellsville University

“‘Purer and More Spiritual Doctrines:’ The Embrace of Romanticism by Southern Catholic Writers”

The third chapter from the manuscript A Catholic Faith for a Modern South: Antebellum Catholics, Slavery, and Cultural Conflict, currently under contract with LSU Press. David’s book uses a variety of publications by Catholic authors to examine the interwoven relationships between Catholicism and republicanism, the southern and American, and slavery and freedom in the South before the Civil War.

Commentators: Catherine O’Donnell, Arizona State University

Daniel Gustafson, SJ, Boston College

Guest: Michael Pasquier, Louisiana State University

Tuesday, February 17

Presenter: Ella Hadacek, University of Notre Dame

“‘So unpopular a Cross as Catholicity:’ The Costs of Conversion Under Coverture”

This dissertation chapter addresses the misconception prevalent in the historiography that women converted because of the influence of husbands or fathers by exploring the very real costs of conversion for women. The chapter looks at the social and personal costs of conversion for American women like Anna Hazard Barker Ward, Eliza Eyre, Jane Francis King, and Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, and English women like Helen Gladstone, Cecil Chetwynd Kerr, and Elizabeth Herbert. These conversions converge with the moment when women began organizing for rights—the right to own property, the right to vote, the right for a divorce, the right to bodily autonomy, and, I suggest, even the right to choose their own religious belief. Freedom was not just legal—it was also intellectual and spiritual. This wave of women’s conversion began around the same moment as the women’s rights movement and was fostered by the rise of transatlantic and European travel for Anglo-American women. The chapter argues that conversion to Catholicism exacerbated existent cracks in women’s relationships with the men around them, and their stories of loss illuminate ways in which laws and social norms left women in precarious positions when they stepped out of the middle class, Protestant ideal that they had previously inhabited.

Commentators: Monica Mercado, Colgate University

Mary Beth Connolly, Purdue University Northwest

Guest: Kyle B. Roberts, Congregational Library & Archives

Thursday, March 19

Presenter: Tim Dulle, University of Scranton 

“‘To Really See,’ Meeting Corita Kent”

This is the introduction to Tim’s revised dissertation at Fordham’s Department of Theology. The project focuses on Corita Kent and the cultural history of American Catholicism since World War II.

Commentators: Tom Rzeznik, Seton Hall University

Monica Mercado, Colgate University

Guest:  Mark Massa, SJ, Boston College

Tuesday, April 14

Presenter: Elsa Mendoza, Middlebury College

“Mothers, Parishioners, and Patrons: Slaveholding Women and the Growth of Jesuit Education”

A chapter from a manuscript under contract with Cambridge University Press, Property of the College: Family, Religion, and Slavery in the Making of Jesuit Education. 

Commentators: Katie Holscher, University of New Mexico

Markus Friedrich, University of Hamburg

Claudio Ferlan, Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Guest: Camilla Russell, Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu