Associate Professor
Education:
2003 – Doctor of Philosophy in History, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana
1999 – M.A. in European History, University of Notre Dame.
1998 – M.A. in Theology, concentration in the History of Christianity, University of Notre Dame.
1990 – B.S. in Theology, Taylor University-Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, Indiana; semesters of study in Brazil and the Dominican Republic.
1986 – Diploma, Sierra Leone, West Africa, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Division of Continuing Studies Independent Study High School.
Teaching:
- Western Civilizations I and II
- World Civilizations I and II
- Early Modern Europe
- Modern Europe
- Old Regime France
- Modern France
- Alexis de Tocqueville in His Time
- Emile Zola and His Age
- Americans in Paris
- Power and Culture in the Modern European Empires
- Religion and Power: Christianity and Colonialism
Publications:
- “Creating the People of God’: French Utopian Dreams and the Moralization of Africans and Slaves,” in In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World, JP Daughton and Owen White, eds., (Oxford University Press), 2012.
- “Voltaire,” The Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, Volume 3, J. Varacalli, R. Myers, and M. Coulter, eds., (The ScarecrowPress), 2012.
Conference Papers and Presentations:
- 2011 – Chair of the Panel, “Militarized Politics: Military Service and Militarism in French Politics and Policy from Napoleon to Pétain,” Annual Conference of the Society for French Historical Studies, Charleston, SC, February 10-12, 2011.
- 2006 – “The French Catholic Colony of Sierra Leone? Freetown under Sir Charles MacCarthy, 1814-1824,” American Historical Association, Atlanta, GA.
- 2003 – “The Marriage of the Sword and the Gospel: Ernest Psichari’s Novels of France and Africa,” Western Society for French History, Newport Beach, CA.
- “Creating ‘The People of God’: French Catholic Utopian Dreams and the ‘Moralization’ of Africans and Slaves, 1815-1855,” French Colonial Historical Society, Toulouse, France.
- “Good Mothers, Great Men: Social Crises and Gender Identities in the French Slave Colonies,” Select Symposium of the Program in Gender Studies, University of Notre Dame.
- 2002 – “The Séminaire des jeunes africains: Constructing Catholic Identity in Senegal and France,” International Conference on Christianity and Native Cultures, Saint Mary’s College, IN.
- “French Catholic Abolitionism: Missionaries, Politics, and the Antislavery Movement in France, 1830-1848,” American Society of Church History, San Francisco, CA.