Faculty Profiles

My research and scholarship combines the study of American culture and religion with modern Middle Eastern history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My goal is to write and teach globally situated history that explores the interactions of American history with the world. I am particularly interested in the intersections of private beliefs and public activism. My research explores a network of religious social activists I call “Practical Christians,” who shared a commitment to non-sectarian Christian cooperation and the exercise of Christian Citizenship in order to reform their neighborhoods, their nation, and the world.

University of Notre Dame
Ph.D., History, 2012

University of Notre Dame
M.A., History, 2007

Wheaton College
M.A., Biblical Archaeology: New Testament and the Classical World, 2004

Moody Bible Institute
B.A., Biblical Studies, 1999

• U.S. History
• History
• American Culture and Religion
• Public Activism
• Modern Middle Eastern History
• Teaching and Education

My current book project, Civilizing the World: Practical Christians, Progressive Religion, and Politics from Chicago to the Middle East, 1890-1925, analyzes social reformers who defied categorization within the Social Gospel or secular progressive movements.

My publications include “The Near Eastern Front of the Great War and the Self-Secularization of Christian Humanitarian Work,” in Remembering Armageddon: Religion and the First World War, ed., Philip Jenkins (2015), and “America’s Sacred Duty: Near East Relief and the Armenian Crisis, 1915-1930,” in Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online, eds. Ken Rose and Erwin Levold (2009). Additional publications include a review of Jonathan Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War in Journal of Church and State (December 2010) and articles on "Alexander Russell Webb," and "Columbian Exposition of 1893 & Muslim Participation at the Fair," in The Encyclopedia of Muslim American History, ed., Edward E. Curtis IV (2009).

• America and the Middle East
• Marriage, Family & Gender in U.S. History
• Modern History of the Middle East
• Religion, Politics & Society in 20th-Century America

The Near Eastern Front of the Great War and the Self-Secularization of Christian Humanitarian Work, Remembering Armageddon: Religion and the First World War
ed., Philip Jenkins, 2015
Remembering Armageddon explores the powerful religious dimensions of the First World War.
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America’s Sacred Duty: Near East Relief and the Armenian Crisis, 1915-1930, Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online
Sarah Miglio, 2009
Throughout World War I and its aftermath, hundreds of thousands of refugees across Europe and Asia Minor were the recipients of humanitarian aid. But in the United States one ethnic group in particular, the Armenians, captured Americans‟ imaginations and prompted the nation to action.
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