Education

MA, Marquette University, 2010
BA, University of Dayton, magna cum laude, 2008

Research Interests

I am interested in the American Catholic experience from 1930 to 1985. This focus introduces broader questions into my research about religion's turbulent, yet creative relationship with modernity.  My research investigates "how religion works" in the twentieth century United States. I focus on the intersections of lived experience, theology, institutions, and print culture. Recent and upcoming projects include a history of Lent and the end of fasting and the explosion of Catholic print culture in the mid-twentieth century. I am at work on an article-length study that explores a series of alleged miracles and Marian apparitions that occurred at Holy Hill shrine (thirty-five miles north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin) between 1880 and 1920.

Awards

Catholic Press Conference, Best Feature Article in a Scholarly Magazine, 2011

The Society of Automotive Historians, 2008 Richard Scharchburg Student Paper Award in Automotive History.

Publications

“The National Cash Register Company and the Neighborhoods: New Perspectives on Relief in the Dayton Flood of 1913” Ohio History, 118 (2011): 49-71. 

“Riding with St. Paul in the Passenger Side: The Archdiocese of Milwaukee Enters the Automobile Age, 1920-1965,” American Catholic Studies, 121 (Summer 2010): 65-93.

Conference Papers

“Liturgical Politics: Or, How Catholics Make Traditions,” Presented at “Ways of Knowing”: A Graduate Conference on Religion at Harvard Divinity School, October 26-27, 2012.

“More than Anticommunism: Materialism and the Death of Catholic Dualism, 1948-1969” Presented at the 2012 Meeting of the Conference on Faith and History, October 4-6, 2012.

“Beyond Self-Mortification to the Politics of Human Rights: Paul VI’s 1966 Abolition of Fasting in the American Context, 1930-1985.” Presented at the American Historical Association, January 5-8, 2012.

“The Disembodiment of American Catholicism: The Lenten Reformation, 1935-1985.” Presented at the 11th Annual Florida State University Religious Studies Graduate Symposium, February 17-19, 2012.

“The Making of a Modern American Pilgrimage: Holy Hill Shrine, 1880-1906,” Presented at a Joint Meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association and the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, April 14-16, 2011.

“From Miracle to Meditation: American Consumer Culture and the Transformation of Catholic Devotion at Holy Hill Shrine, 1880-1960.” Presented at Capitalism in Action! Harvard’s Third Annual Graduate Conference on the History of American Capitalism, March 3-5, 2011.

“A Pilgrimage of Brevity to a Center of Splendor: The Modernization of the Hajj, 1925-1980,” Presented at the University of Maine Graduate Student Conference, October 1-2, 2010. 

“Materialistic Consumerism as Exaltation of the Individual: Papal Critiques of Western Consumer Culture, 1878-2004.” Presented at the University of Illinois at Chicago History Graduate Society’s Third Annual Graduate Student History Conference, April 10, 2010.

“I Still Have my Smile’: The Triumph of Consumer Culture in the Dayton Flood of 1913,” Presented at the Phi Alpha Theta 2010 Biennial Convention, San Diego, January 9-12, 2010.

“Riding with St. Paul in the Passenger Side and the Creation of Consumer Sites: The Archdiocese of Milwaukee Enters the Automobile Age, 1920-1965.” Presented at Baylor University’s third annual Symposium on Faith and Culture, Secularization and Revival: The Fate of Religion in Modern Intellectual History, Baylor University, October 8-11, 2009.

“University Man Turned Urban Politician: A New Perspective on Richard T. Frankensteen & the Politics of Building a Labor Community.” Presented at the Loyola University Chicago History Graduate Conference, Loyola University of Chicago, April 24-25, 2009.

“Consumers, Cadillacs, and Civil Rights: The Social and Cultural Impact of the Automobile in Ebony, 1945-1965.”  Presented at the University of Alabama Graduate Conference on Power and Struggle, University of Alabama March 6-7, 2009.