Professor Emeritus
Clough Millennium Chair in History
University Historian
Lawrence House 202
122 College Road
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Telephone: 617-552-2267
Email: james.otoole@bc.edu
American religion; American Catholic history; history of information
Professor O’Toole teaches courses in the history of American religion and the history of American Catholicism. His interests lie in the history of religious practice and popular devotional life. He has published a general history of the American Catholic laity from Colonial times to the present, and he is also studying the history of the practice of confession in America. He is currently writing a new history of Boston College.
The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America (2008)
Boston's Histories: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. O'Connor, co-edited with David Quigley (2004)
Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820-1920 (2002)
Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1859-1944 (1992)
Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (1990)