Leadership &
Executive Council
ACHA Officers and Executive Council Members
University of New Mexico
- Research Interests: Catholicism and U.S. law; Catholicism, race, and colonialism; Catholicism in the American West / U.S.-Mexico Borderlands; Catholic women religious.
- Notable Publications: “Lay Workers in the Rural Churches of New Mexico: Vatican II, Memory, and Ministry,” in Catholics in the Vatican II Era: Local Histories of a Global Event, eds. Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Timothy Matovina, Robert Orsi (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Religious Lessons: Catholics Sisters and the Captured Schools Crisis in New Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Iona College
President (2020)
Research Interests: Native American History; Education and Pedagogy; Transnational Studies
Notable Publications: Seeds of Faith: Catholic Indian Boarding Schools (Garland, 2000).
Mount St. Mary’s University
- Research Interests: U.S. in the World, U.S. Religious History, History of Built Environment, Global Catholicism, Southern Africa
- Notable Publications:
“Missionary Empire: American Catholics in Belize and Guatemala, 1941-1961,” American Catholic Studies Vol. 130, No. 3, (Fall 2019); “’Quest for the Holy Grail’: Central American War, Catholic Internationalism, and United States Public Diplomacy in Reagan’s America,” U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 33, no. 1 (Winter 2015), 163-197; “God Save the Boer: Irish American Catholics and the South African War, 1899-1902,” U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 26, no. 4 (Fall 2008), 1-26.
Rivier University
- Research Interests: 20th-century German political Catholicism, Modern Germany, nationalism and religion.
- Most Recent Publication: “Multiple Caesars? Germany, Bavaria, and German Catholics in the Interwar Period,” in Beyond the Borders of Baptism: Catholicity, Allegiances, and Lived Identities, ed. Michael L. Budde, Eugene: Cascade Books, 2016.
Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West
- Research Interests: U.S. Catholicism; 19th and 20th century history of Catholic ethnics, priesthood/religious life, missionary work, and devotionalism.
- Most Recent Publication: “God’s Beggar and Builder: Father Francis Koch, OFM, and the Growth of the Church in Northern New Jersey,” in Essays on New Jersey Catholic History: In Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of the Founding of the New Jersey Colony (New Jersey Catholic Historical Commission, 2016).
University of San Diego
- Research Interests: History of the Immigrant Church
- Notable Publications: Disturbing the Peace: A History of the Christian Family Movement, 1949-1974 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press); Keeping Faith: European and Asian Immigrants; part of the American Catholic Identities: A Documentary History Project (with Joseph White and Ellen Skerrett), (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books) 2002; We Are the Church: A History of the Diocese of Oakland, 1797-2002 (Strasbourg, France: Editions du Signe)
The University of Texas at Austin
- Research Interests: Immigration, race and ethnicity, borderlands, women’s religious communities, Catholic laywomen.
- Most Recent Publication: “Holy Cross Hospital, Austin: The Birth, Good Life, and Death of a Community Resource,” Catholic Southwest, A Journal of History and Culture25 (2014): 60-76
Springfield College
- Research Interests: Religion in the United States; American Catholicism; Religion and Gender; Interfaith Studies
- Notable Publications: Millennial Missionaries: How a Group of Young Catholics is Trying to Make Catholicism Cool (Oxford, 2019); From the Pews in the Back: Young Women & Catholicism (Liturgical Press, 2009); “St. Gemma is My Girl’: Devotional Practices of Millennial Catholics and the Making of Contemporary Catholic Saints” (American Catholic Studies, Winter 2017); ”Buddhist Women and Interfaith Work in the U.S.” (Journal for Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2007)
Redemptorist Archives
- Recent Publications: A Catholic Brain Trust: The History of the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011); Editor, The Making of Modern Immigration: An Encyclopedia of People and Ideas (Greenwood/ABC-CLIO, 2012).
Stonehill College
- Research Interests: U.S. Catholic history in the 20th century, especially immigration, Catholic higher education, and religious life.
- Recent Publications: Father of the Fatherless: The Authorized Biography of Father Nelson Baker, Paulist Press 2011; Navy Priest: The Life of Captain Jake Laboon, SJ, The Catholic University of America Press, 2015.
Columbia University
Executive Council, 2019-21
Stephen is a doctoral candidate in the field of U.S. History focusing on twentieth-century political and religious history. His dissertation, The Suburbanization of American Catholicism: Postwar Political Realignment and Religious Restructuring, 1945-1980, explores the effects of post-war suburbanization on American Catholicism by examining changes in the dioceses and parishes of metropolitan New York. His research has been published in the Journal of Church and State, U.S. Catholic Historian, and American Catholic Studies.
St. Lawrence University/Boston College
Executive Council, 2017-19
Carolyn Twomey is a visiting assistant professor of European History at St. Lawrence University. She received her Ph.D. from Boston College in 2017.
Her research and teaching focuses on the history of cultural and religious exchange during the medieval period, especially the rituals and material objects of conversion that negotiated boundaries between the secular and sacred.
Catholic Historical Review
Ex officio
Nelson H. Minnich is the editor of the Catholic Historical Review and a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. His work has dealt broadly with Christian humanism, the Catholic and Protestant Reformations, and the papacy and general councils of the early modern period, especially the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17).
Under ACHA bylaw, the editor of the CHR, which is the official organ of the Association, holds an ex officio seat on the Executive Council “with voice but without vote.”