Over the years, I have come to appreciate more and more just how much teaching and
research influence each other in how I approach European history. Answering tough
questions in the classroom forces me to think more clearly about the questions I bring
to my research; and staying current with new research forces me constantly to rethink
the material I teach. It is this dynamism that I love most about college teaching,
and that I strive to share with my students.
European history is at an interesting crossroads. Not only is Europe itself changing,
but so is how we think about it in an increasingly complex global environment. In
stark contrast to the overweening imperial pretensions of the recent past, Europeans
have had to learn to adapt to a significant reduction in global power and influence.
This has forced them to work together in new and creative ways, but it has also produced
a significant and disturbing political revanchism that echoes some of the darker chapters
of Europe’s history. What the future holds is anyone’s guess, but what is certain
is that, far from a distant land of popes, princes, knights and castles, Europe remains
a vital part of world history.
Germany, the First World War, and Cultural Trauma: Perspectives on a Lifeworld in
Crisis (Camden House, 2026).
Brentano Against the Church: Faith and Friendship in the Fight against Infallibility
(under contract, SpringerNature)
“The Tears of Rosa Luxemburg: A Melancholy Critique of Solidarity,” Critical Catastrophe Studies, Eds. Matthew Childs and Christoph Weber (Brill). Forthcoming
“On the Wrong Side of History: Crypto-Catholics, Enlightenment, and the Emergence
of ‘Catholic-ism’ in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of Religion in Europe 15 (2022).
Devotional Activism: Public Religion, Innovation and Culture in the Nineteenth-Century.
St. Augustine’s Press, 2023
The Teaching of Jesus. Translation of Franz Brentano’s Die Lehre Jesu. (2021)
“Political Restoration and its Effects on Theology, 1815–30,” The Oxford Companion to German Theology, Eds. Grant Kaplan and Kevin M. Vander Schel (Oxford University Press, 2023).
“A Critique of Everyday Reason: Johann Michael Sailer and the Catholic Enlightenment
in Germany,” Intellectual History Review 30.4 (2020).
“Learning from Lasaulx: The Origins of Brentano’s Four Phases Theory,” Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, Eds. Guillaume Fréchette, Denis Fisette and Friedrich Stadler (SpringerNature, 2020).
“Hopes and Dreams in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Brentano, History and the Jews,” Brentano Studien Eds. Guillaume Fréchette and Denis Fisette (2018).
“A Genealogy of Protestant Reason,” Archaeologies of Confession: Writing the German Reformation 1517–2017 Ed. Carina L. Johnson, David M. Luebke, Marjorie E. Plummer, and Jesse Spohnholz,
New York: Berghahn (2017).
“Brentano’s Philosophy of Religion,” Routledge Handbook of Brentano and the Brentano School Ed. Uriah Kriegel, New York: Routledge (2016).
“Memory and Morality,” Explorations in Media Ecology 11.3/4 (2012).
“‘Our Direction is Forward not Backward’: German Catholics and the Revolution of 1848,”
Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750–1850 (2012).
“True and False Enlightenment: German Scholars and the Discourse of Catholicism in
the Nineteenth Century,” Catholic Historical Review 97.1 (January 2011).
“Intellectual History and the Return of Religion,” Historically Speaking 12.2 (2011).
“Religion, Culture and the Intellectuals,” Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions 6 (2010).
“Let’s Talk About Religion,” Perspectives on History (May 2010).
“Restoring Faith in the Humanities: The Return of Religion,” Journal of Contemporary Thought 29 (Summer 2009).
“Program for a New Catholic Wissenschaft: Devotional Activism and Catholic Modernity
in the Nineteenth-Century,” Modern Intellectual History (November 2007).
“Infallibility and Intentionality: Franz Brentano’s Diagnosis of German Catholicism”
Journal of the History of Ideas (July 2007).
