University of California, Riverside
Candidate for Vice President (2027)
Candidate statement
I am honored to be considered to serve as Vice President of the American Catholic Historical Association—to collaborate with colleagues to support our deep and dynamic field of Catholic Studies. I first joined ACHA in 2015 and have served as the chair of the Ellis Dissertation Award Committee. As an historian of religion, my research focuses especially on the religious lives of Mexican and Mexican American Catholics. My recent book, The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas (NYU 2021) considers Spanish and Indigenous Mexican religious responses to a catastrophic epidemic. My first book, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local Faith from the Conquest to the Present (OUP 2010) explores the affective bonds that join devotional communities to vital and agentic objects of material religion. On my home campus at the University of California, Riverside I have served from 2022-2024 as the Associate Director of our Latino and Latin American Research Center and for several years as Chair of our Women’s Faculty Association. Most recently, I have collaborated with Native Californian scholars and tribal leaders on the Critical Mission Studies Project— which supports Indigenous perspectives on the history of California’s Spanish missions. I am interested especially in reconsiderations of and new approaches to the global dimensions of Catholicism and would hope to foster these conversations at ACHA. I also prioritize mentorship of the next generation of scholars.