Welcome to my website! I am always happy to hear from anyone, including potential students, so drop me a line at jgc23@duke.edu. Below is a large picture of me. And below that, information on me as a historian. I am obviously not a web designer.
About me: I am the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University. I work on the intellectual history of modern Europe and the United States, focusing on themes of religion, gender, and the family. My first book, Catholic Modern (Harvard, 2018), asks about the transformation of the Catholic Church in 20th century Europe. How did Catholics, long affiliated with monarchism and anti-Semitism, come to accept liberal democracy and capitalism? How, in a word, did Europe’s Catholics become modern? The book argues that the major transformation took place in the 1930s and 40s. In those crucial years of violence and war, Catholics decided to stop trying to conquer society as a whole, and start trying to salvage “the family” as the source of moral authority and political order. The book thus explains how and why Catholics became buttresses of the postwar democratic order, and also explains the new centrality of gender and family ethics to Catholic life, thought, and policymaking.
My next project, tentatively entitled The Ends of Life: Getting Old in the American Century, uses similar methods to explore the history of old age in 20th century America. This is under contract with Basic Books. The book asks how American society has grappled with the truly stunning expansion of the life course in the twentieth century. In some ways, this was handled remarkably well, given the American state’s notable failures in other dimensions. Elder poverty plummeted, and the elderly are really the only Americans who have access to a functioning welfare state. This success, though, is limited — many older Americans, especially women and immigrants, are falling through the safety net. And this success comes with a cost. The unique success of the elderly at accessing benefits has led to generational conflict that is debilitating for American democracy. This book attempts to understand how we got to this place, and how we might imagine a more intergenerational future.
I have published in both scholarly and popular venues, including Journal of Modern History and The Nation.
