Ansari Institute Faculty Fellow Sarah Shortall, assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, has earned a prestigious honor for recent book, Soldiers of God in a Secular World: The Politics of Catholic Theology in Twentieth-Century France.
Shortall will receive the Junior Award at the Giuseppe Alberigo Award ceremony. The prize will be presented during the annual conference of the European Academy of Religion (June 20-23, 2022). The award is named for Giuseppe Alberigo (1927-2007), a historian who combined exceptional and exemplary rigor in research and unique timeliness in the intellectual and theological debate of his time.
Shortall’s work examines the impact of Catholic theology on French politics after the separation of church and state in 1905. It shows how the continuing role of theology in an ostensibly secular public sphere disrupts prevailing ideas about the nature and scope of the political in the modern world. The book draws on her research as an intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe with particular interest in modern France, Catholic thought, and the relationship between religion and politics.