Sarah Shortall is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. She studies the intellectual and cultural history of modern Europe, particularly the relationship between religion and politics.
Shortall’s first book, and the book she’s currently working on, both explore the role of Catholic thought in secular spaces. For her, there is no better place than Notre Dame for studying the history of Catholicism.
Video transcription:
Sarah Shortall: My name is Sarah Shortall, I’m a historian of modern European thought. I’m especially interested in the relationship between Catholicism and broader developments in European philosophy and politics.
My first book, called Soldiers of God in a Secular World, explored the political role of theology after the separation of church and state in France. It explored how Catholic theologians engaged with the relationship between Catholicism and modernity and, in grappling with that, also made much wider contributions to political debates about fascism and communism, colonialism and capitalism, and democracy and human rights. They reshaped French intellectual life more broadly through their theological work.
I’m currently working on a book project that explores the role of Catholic thought in the development of global consciousness since the Second World War. I’m interested in how Catholic visions of the globe as an ecological, theological, and political problem have interacted with secular forms of global consciousness.
I try to focus less on the central institutions of the church like the Vatican, and instead on more marginal figures within the church.
One of the chapters, for example, focuses on the influence of this Jesuit priest who was also a paleontologist — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — and his influence at the United Nations.
I was really struck and surprised by how many people — and what an extraordinary range of people — were influenced by Teilhard de Chardin. Five of eight secretaries general, for example, mention him, but also writers like Don DeLillo, Flannery O’Connor; artists like Salvador Dali; environmentalists; scientists.
A figure like him — precisely because he is somewhat marginal from Catholic orthodoxy — actually allows us to see all kinds of connections that we wouldn’t normally see between secular and religious thought.
I think of teaching and research as deeply intertwined. Whenever I broach a new research topic, I often develop a new course to complement it. And what better way to develop knowledge of a new field than in conversation with really bright undergraduate and graduate students that we have here?
I can’t really imagine a better place to study the history of Catholicism than Notre Dame. There are just such wonderful resources here for scholars in developing research proposals and grant proposals. It really is the best place to do the kind of work that I do.
