I am always impressed by the reciprocal influence teaching and research have on each
other. 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 the profession.
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. What
is particularly exciting right now is how this situation has helped reframe important
questions, such as religion. Where formerly assumptions about “secularization” went
hand in hand with assumptions regarding modernization, the re-evaluation of the modernization
paradigm has helped encourage new approaches to the complex interrelationship between
the sacred and secular. This change in perspectives directly informs my current work
on the European Catholic revival, and my attempt to formulate a coherent understanding
of “Catholic modernity.”
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. David Lincicum, Judith Wolfe and Johannes Zachhuber — forthcoming.
“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).
