Events & Media
Upcoming
The Invention of Catholicism: A Roundtable
Friday, January 8, 2027 · 8:30–10:00 AM
New Orleans Marriott, Balcony L
American Historical Association Annual Meeting · Joint with the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era
A roundtable on The Invention of Catholicism with David A. Bell (Princeton University), Jeffrey D. Burson (Georgia Southern University), and Carol E. Harrison (University of South Carolina), chaired by Darrin M. McMahon (Dartmouth College).
Recent Events
“Catholic Duties in the Age of Revolutions”
From Duties to Rights: Global Historical Perspectives · Sciences Po, Paris
May 28–29, 2026
Through Bonald, Lamennais, and Taparelli, the paper traces how duties allowed Catholics to move from rejecting revolutionary rights to developing a theory of rights grounded in natural law and social obligation.
“Sacral Compromises: Concordats, Catholicism, and the Sacred in Post-Revolutionary Europe, c. 1800–45”
The French Revolution and the Sacred: Global and Contemporary Perspectives · Princeton University
May 14–15, 2026
After the revolutionary dechristianization campaigns, concordats gave Catholicism a protected legal space but did not restore the church’s old privileges, forcing Catholics to compete for influence through persuasion, organization, and lay mobilization.
“A Liberal Pope: Pius VII’s Homily, the Abbé Grégoire, and the Making of Liberal Catholicisms”
71st Annual Conference of the Society for French Historical Studies, Liberties/Libertés · Philadelphia
March 5–7, 2026
The afterlife of a 1797 homily by the future Pius VII reveals how the same text could sustain two competing Catholic appropriations of liberty: pragmatic accommodation and principled liberalism.
Media & Public Writing
“Confessional Modernity” — SIHS Article Prize Interview
Society for Italian Historical Studies · 2021
An interview with Amanda Madden about the research behind my article “Confessional Modernity,” which received an Honorable Mention for the SIHS Article Prize in Modern Italian History.
“An Eighteenth-Century Crusade: The War Against Revolutionary France and the Origins of Modern Catholicism, 1789–99”
Age of Revolutions · December 11, 2019
An account of how Catholic opponents of the French Revolution revived the crusade as a model for ideological warfare—and, paradoxically, learned from the Revolution how to mobilize the masses.
Spanish translation published by Conversación sobre la Historia, 2020.