Vice Presidential Candidates Announced for Fall Election

Thomas F.X. Noble

The Nominating Committee of the American Catholic Historical Association announces its ballot for officers. Each year the membership of the association votes for a new Vice President who in the following year succeeds to the office of President. In addition, the membership will elect two new members of the Executive Council for terms of three years and a new member to the Nominating Committee also for a term of three years. This year the ballots will go out to the membership in September and the results will be announced in October. This will allow new officers the opportunity to attend the annual meeting in Boston, January 6 to 9, 2011.

The two candidates for the office of Vice President 2011(President 2012) are Thomas F.X. Noble, chair of the Department of History, the University of Notre Dame and Francis Christopher Oakley, Emeritus Professor of History and Senior Fellow, the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Williams College.

Professor Noble is a medieval historian with a specialty in the papacy. He is currently at work on two research projects, “The Idea of Rome in the Medieval Mind” and “The Papacy from its Origins to the Present.” A graduate of Ohio University and Michigan State University, he has taught at Michigan State, Texas Tech University and the University of Virginia before joining the faculty of the University of Notre Dame.

Professor Oakley is a medieval historian with a specialty in medieval political ideas. He is currently at work on a three-volume monograph on the emergence of western political thought in the Latin middle ages. A graduate of Oxford University and Yale University, he has taught both at Yale and at Williams College.

Francis Christopher Oakley

This year two Americanists complete their terms on the Executive Council, Professors Richard Gribble C.S.C. of Stonehill College and Timothy Matovina Director of the Cushwa Center at the University of Notre Dame.

Candidates for their seats are Professors R. Bentley Anderson S.J. of Fordham University, Una Mary Cadegan of the University of Dayton, Anne Klejment of the University of St. Thomas and James P. McCartin of Seton Hall University.

Professor Anderson’s area of research is Catholics and race with a specialty in the southern United States. Professor Cadegan has a specialty in popular culture and is researching the development of Catholic literature in the first half of the twentieth century, Professor Klejment has written on the life and thought of Dorothy Day and the development of pacifism and nonviolence in Catholic America. Professor McCartin has a specialty in modern working class Catholics and is at work on a monograph on American Catholicism and sexuality.

Professor Kevin Spicer of Stonehill College completes his three year term on the Nominating Committee with this election. Professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings of Notre Dame succeeds him as chair. The committee has nominated two candidates both Modern Europeanists to succeed him; Professor Richard Crane of Greensboro College and Professor Mark Edward Ruff of Saint Louis University. Professor Crane has researched and written in the area of European Catholics and the Holocaust. Professor Ruff has a research specialty in post war German Catholicism.

Ballots will be mailed to all active members on September 15 and must be returned to the Office of the American Catholic Historical Association, Room 320 Mullen Library, the Catholic University of America, 20064, post marked no later than October 20.