Research

As an historian, I study the role of gender and sexuality in forming and re-forming religious and intellectual communities in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States.

My forthcoming book, An Archive of Girlhood: The Convent Academy in Catholic America, focuses on the Catholic convent academy in nineteenth-century America. As I finish this project, I have also started research on the visual cultures of Puerto Rican Catholic childhoods in mid-20th century New York City (most recently featured in Smithsonian Magazine), and have written on the intersections of race, religion, and sexuality for the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History. I have published on convent academy graduates at the Catholic Summer School of America for Religion and American Culture and examined my own collecting habits for venues including the journal Material Religion (as part of an exploration of the uses of eBay for scholars of religious histories). Article projects in progress include a consideration of contemporary “upstate utopias” in post-pandemic fiction and nonfiction, coinciding with my co-teaching project at the Oneida Community Mansion House, and an examination of the Catholic “mid century modern” focusing on the life of writer and advertising executive Jane Trahey–best known for writing the source material that became the popular 1966 film “The Trouble with Angels.”

I continue to consult and speak on bringing women, gender, and sexuality studies into public history and museum spaces, occasioned by the ongoing commemorations of the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Following additional local history threads, I am also beginning research on the life history of Ella Harding — a nineteenth-century Catholic “spinster” school teacher from Auburn, New York — as part of a second book project project that will explore singleness as a frame for American women’s religious history.