The American Catholic Historical Association has conferred its Lifetime Distinguished Scholarship Award to Professor Frank J. Coppa of St. John’s University in New York. Dr. Coppa, recently retired, has emerged as a highly respected historian of the modern papacy.
Professor Kenneth Pennington, Kelly-Quinn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Catholic University of America takes the ACHA teaching honor.
ACHA awards first annual Service to Catholic History Award for Conference’s sponsorship of “Women and Spirit” exhibit, which describes how Catholic sisters helped shape American history and culture.
A new slate of members have been elected to ACHA offices. Pictured above (clockwise) are: Vice President-elect Thomas F.X. Noble; Executive Council members-elect Anne Klejment and R. Bentley Anderson; and Nominating Committee member-elect Mark Ruff.
Fr. Steven Avella’s updates on the annual meeting in Boston, new awards, and the upcoming elections.
Maria C. Morrow examines American Catholic culture in the tumultuous 1960s, which saw political turmoil, socioeconomic unease, the sexual revolution, and Vatican II all contribute to the changing identity of American Catholicism.
In preparation for the 2010 ACHA elections scheduled for later this month, we are turning over space on ACHAhistory.org to candidates to allow them to their visions for the Association and share background about themselves. In this installment, the two candidates for vice president–Thomas F.X. Noble of Notre Dame and Francis Christopher Oakley of Williams College–outline their platforms. Candidates for other ACHA offices’ statements will be posted here, on the ACHAhistory.org home page, as they are received.
The CCHA/ACHA joint conference will be held at the University of St Michael’s College on the University of Toronto campus on April 15 and 16, 2011. Themes include Catholics Across Boundaries, Local or International Church, Missions, or Immigration.
Two candidates are on the ballot for the ACHA nominating committee. Read the statements of Mark Edward Ruff of Saint Louis University and Richard Crane of Greensboro College.
Thomas Izbicki: My present interests include the Eucharist in medieval canon law. The issues involved include how Transubstantiation entered into the vocabulary of the canonists and how they accommodated a heightened sense of the Real Presence into disciplinary norms.
Mary Zito: Some medieval and early modern maps bear the inscription ‘Here be dragons,’ or even simply the images of dragons or other monsters, to denote an area that was unknown – an area where there could be anything.
The Reverend Charles E. O’Neill, S.J., church historian, coeditor of the Diccionario Histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, and member of theAmerican Catholic Historical Association from 1967 to 2005, died onDecember 19, 2009, at the Jesuit Infirmary in New Orleans after a lengthystruggle with Parkinson’s disease.
John W. Witek, S.J., a member of the American Catholic Historical Association since 1974 and ACHA second vice-president in 2001, died of cancer in Georgetown University Hospital on January 31, 2010. He had been professor of East Asian history at Georgetown University for thirty-five years. Within the broad scope of East Asian history in the early-modern period, he specialized in China, with a focus on the Jesuits’ presence there.
Thomas Worcester, S.J.: At the College of the Holy Cross one of my more popular history courses is called The Papacy in the Modern World. By ‘modern’ I mean since ca. 1500, and this is but the first of many surprises for students.
ACHA president Rev. Steven M. Avella offers an introduction to the new ACHA Web site and a look at events coming up throughout the next year, including preparations for the 2011 annual meeting in Boston.
2011 conference, hosted conjointly with the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, will examine the theme “Catholics Across Boundaries: Local or International Church, Missions, Wars, Immigration Issues, Fighting Communism.”
Association will confer three new awards at its annual meeting in Boston in January 2011.
ACHA president Fr. Steven M. Avella welcomes visitors and members to the ACHA’s new home on the Web and looks forward to the work underway at the Association this year.
The ACHA’s 2010 spring conference will be held this Saturday, March 13 at Princeton University. Registration has been extended until March 12; online registration is open. A finalized program is now available, as are directions and a list of accommodations. We look forward to seeing you this weekend.
The ACHA’s annual spring conference, held this year at Princeton University, is fast approaching. This year’s event will be held on March 13 and is partially underwritten by a grant from Princeton University’s Russell P. Newton Fund, thanks to much hard work by President Emeritus William Chester Jordan.
University of Notre Dame professor honored for most original and distinguished contribution to the field of Catholic studies in 2009.
The ACHA’s annual spring conference, held this year at Princeton University, is fast approaching. This year’s event will be held on March 13 and is partially underwritten by a grant from Princeton University’s Russell P. Newton Fund, thanks to much hard work by President Emeritus William Chester Jordan.
The 2010 ACHA Annual Meeting, held conjointly with the American Historical Association’s conference from Jan. 7-10, played host to an important Executive Council meeting and many other important events.
Executive Council approves three distinguished service awards to be given annually, starting at the ACHA annual meeting in January 2011.
The ACHA will hold its 2010 Annual Meeting during the AHA’s annual meeting in San Diego from January 7-10, 2010. The AHA meeting’s theme is “Oceans, Islands, Continents.”
Archbishop Timothy Dolan has another side: He’s a scholar of American Church history who holds a doctorate in the subject from Catholic University–and a cardholding ACHA member.
ACHA meets in Philadelphia for its annual Spring conference. James O’Toole, the Clough Millennium Professor of History at Boston College, the former archivist of the Archdiocese of Boston, described the difference in perspective between archivists and historians: “One sees the forest and the other the individual tree.”
William Chester Jordan is Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and Chairman of the History Department. He is a former Director of the Program in Medieval Studies and has also been Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies.