Colleen McDannell | Professor of History,
Sterling M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies
Colleen McDannell
Professor of History,
McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies
801/581-4748
CTIHB 245
About
Colleen McDannell studies American religious history and culture. A recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, she is particularly interested in how average people make sense of the supernatural. To that end, she works in the areas of visual and material culture and gender studies. She has been invited to teach at Dartmouth; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. There she was a Fulbright Scholar and the holder of the John Adams Chair in American History. Prior to coming to the University in 1989, she taught at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
- PhD., Religious Studies, Temple University, 1984.
- M.A., Religious Studies, University of Denver, 1978.
- B.A., Religious Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1975.
McDannell’s research interests in American religious history are wide ranging. Currently, she is finishing up a highly illustrated book geared for the general reader called, Catholic Utah. This was a more upbeat activity following a three-year project on “Gender, Sex, and Power: Towards a History of Clergy Sex Abuse in the U. S. Catholic Church,” sponsored by Notre Dame University. Several of her books, including Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy and The Spirit of Vatican II: Catholic Reform in America, take seriously the religious experiences of women. Her work in Mormon Studies includes publications on modernization, globalization, gender, and the arts. As a specialist in visual and material culture, McDannell has published Catholics in the Movies; Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression; and the now classic, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. As a part of a Lilly Foundation Grant, she curated a touring exhibition of 45 Depression Era photographs of American religious practices. Her book Heaven: A History (co-authored with Bernhard Lang) has been translated into multiple languages and reviewed in the New York Times. Published essays reflect an eclectic methodology and range from an exploration of Latter-day Saint tour guides in Mexico, to an analysis of Jesuit themes in the movie The Exorcist, to a study of evangelical Protestant women.
(2023) “‘I Confided in My Mother and She Called the Archdiocese’: Parents and Clergy Sex Abuse, Church History
(2023) “Deseret Hospital, Women, and the Perils of Modernization,” Utah Historical Quarterly
(2020) “Global Mormonism: A Historical Overview” in Gordon Shepherd, et. al Palgrave Handbook of Global Mormonism (Palgrave).
(2020) “Mormon Gender in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” Amy Hoyt and Taylor G. Petrey, Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender
(2020) “Heritage Religion and the Mormons,” Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Carter, The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture (Oxford University Press)
(2019) Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy, Oxford University Press
(2015) “Photography, Teenie Harris, and the Migration of Catholic Images,” Catholic Historical Review
(2012) “Mormons, Mexicans and Book of Mormon Geography,” Dialogue
(2011) The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America, Basic Books
(2008) Catholics in the Movies, editor, Oxford University Press with essays on The Exorcist and The Passion of the Christ
(2007) “Religious History and Visual Culture,” Journal of American History
(2004) Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression, Yale University Press
(2001) “Beyond Dr. Dobson: Women, Girls, and ‘Focus on the Family’” in Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, Illinois University Press
(1988) Heaven: A History with Bernhard Lang, Yale University Press
(1986) The Christian Home in Victorian America: 1840‑1900, Indiana University Press
HIST 3910: God and Money
HIST 4120: Christianity in the Modern World
HIST 4790: American Religions
HIST 7680: Colloquium in American Religious History
(2020) University of Notre Dame working group on “Gender, Sex, and Power: Towards a History of Clergy Sex Abuse in the U. S. Catholic Church,”
(2019) Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women's and/or Gender History, Organization of American Historians, for Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy
(2015) University of Utah Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award
(2014) Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
(2004) Walter Capps Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara
(2001) Rockefeller Foundation Conference on “Religion and Modernity: Rethinking Secularization” Bellagio, Italy
(2000) Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
(1999) Fulbright Scholar and John Adams Chair in American History awarded for the Netherlands for Spring 2000
(1992) Indo‑American Fellowship for Advanced Research in India for project “Christian Cemeteries in India”
(1989) “Honorable Mention" by Catholic Press Association for "'The Devil Was the First Protestant': Gender and Intolerance in Irish Catholic Fiction," U. S. Catholic Historian