David Roach
David Roach
Assistant Professor of History
David Roach is an assistant professor at Campbellsville University in the Department of History, where he teaches classes on American history. He is working on a book manuscript tentatively titled, “An Ancient Faith for a Modern South: Southern Catholic Writers and the Making of the Antebellum South, 1820–1861,” and last year, he published the article, ‘Catholic Paternalism and Slavery’s Capitalism: Bishop John England’s Defense of Domestic Slavery and the Interstate Slave Trade’ in the Journal of Southern History.”
EDUCATION
Baylor University–2022
PhD in History
Advisor: Professor T. Michael Parrish
Baylor University–2017
MA in History
Hillsdale College–2015
BA in History and German
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
Campbellsville University, Department of History, Assistant Professor of History, August 2023–Present
Baylor University, Department of History, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, 2022–2023
PUBLICATIONS
Monographs
A Catholic Faith for the Modern South: Antebellum Catholics, Slavery, and Cultural Conflict, under advance contract with Louisiana State University Press, manuscript due September 2026.
Refereed Journal Articles
“Catholic Paternalism and Slavery’s Capitalism: Bishop John England’s Defense of Domestic Slavery and the Interstate Slave Trade.” In the Journal of Southern History, May 2023.
Encyclopedia Entries
“Americanism.” In American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time. Edited by Gary S. Smith. ABC-CLIO, 2020.
Book Reviews
Review of Transatlantic Religion: Europe, America, and the Making of Modern Christianity, edited by Annette G. Aubert and Zachary Purvis. Church History, 2022.
Review of Catholic Confederates: Faith and Duty in the Civil War South, by Gracjan Kraszewski. Journal of Southern Religion¸ 2021.
Other Publications
“Review of Catherine Osborne’s American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow.” United States Intellectual History Blog, published April 19, 2020, https://s-usih.org/2020/04/review-of-catherine-osbornes-american-catholics-and-the-church-of-tomorrow/
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2024: Faculty Learning Fellow, Campbellsville University
2022: Special Collections Teaching Fellowship, Baylor University
2021: Summer Dissertation Fellowship, Baylor University
2020: Summer Research and Writing Grant, American Catholic Historical Association
2020: Research Travel Grant, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, Notre Dame
2017–2022: Graduate Student Fellowship, Baylor University
2017–2018: Guittard Fellowship, Baylor University
2015–2016: Guittard Fellowship, Baylor University
CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION
Papers Presented
2026: “Nineteenth-Century Southern Catholic Writers and the Creation of United States Catholic History,” American Society of Church History, January 8–11, forthcoming.
2026: “The Aesthetics of ‘Catholic Sentiment’: Anna Peyre Dinnies and the Romantic Impulse in Nineteenth-Century American Catholicism,” American Catholic Historical Association, January 8 – 11, forthcoming.
2025: “What Do the New Histories of Capitalism Have to Do with the Historiography of United States Catholicism (and Vice Versa)?: Some Reflections on Slavery, Religion, and Irony,” The Organization of American Historians, April 3–6.
2025: “Calculating American Catholic Progress in Baltimore’s Metropolitan Almanac,” The Ciceronian Society, March 13–15, 2024.
2024: “Richard Henry Wilde, Hesperia, and Southern Catholic Romanticism,” American Catholic Historical Association, January 4–6.
2023: “Race, Religion, and Slavery in Jedediah Huntington’s Romance of the Dark Lady,” American Catholic Historical Association, January 5–7.
2022: “Decoyed from the hearthstone and immured in gloomy cells”: Gender and Domesticity in Inez and the Huguenot Exiles,” Conference on Faith and History, March 30–April 2.
2022: “Imagining an American Church and Nation: Southern Catholic Novelists in the Antebellum Era.” American Catholic Historical Association, January 6–8.
2021: “Imagining an American Church and Nation: Southern Catholic Novelists in the Antebellum Era.” American Catholic Historical Association, January 7–10. (Conference cancelled)
2020: “Celibate Republican Motherhood: John England’s Defense of the Ursulines in Antebellum Charleston,” 2020 International History of Catholicism in the American South Conference, May 14. (Conference cancelled)
2020: “Perfectly compatible with the practice of true religion”: Bishop John England’s Defense of Southern Slavery.” American Society of Church History Winter Meeting, January 3–6.
2018: “Lost Cause Hagiography: Rewriting Saints Felicity and Perpetua as Southern Catholic Martyrs.” Conference on Faith & History Biennial Meeting, October 4–6.
2016: “‘Deliver thyself, O New-England, from everything that make thee look like a daughter of Babylon’: Anti-Catholicism and the Construction of Religious Community in Early New England.” Conference on Faith & History Biennial Meeting, October 19–22.
Panels Organized
2026: “Exploring the Intellectual Histories of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Catholic Laywomen,” American Catholic Historical Association, January 8–10
2020: “Religion and Politics in the Civil War Era: Case Studies from Catholic, Lutheran, and Evangelical History,” American Society of Church History Winter Meeting, January 3–6
DEPARTMENT TALKS
2020: Baylor University Department of History, Brown Bag Presentation, “A Communion of Saints and Spirits: Rethinking Protestant-Catholic Encounter in the Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe,” November 18, 2020.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Campbellsville University
|
United States History to 1877 |
(Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025) |
|
United States History since 1877 |
(Fall 2023 [F2F, Spring 2024 [F2F], Fall 2023 [OL], Spring 2024 [OL], Fall 2024 [OL[, Spring 2025 [OL]) |
|
Colonial and Independence |
Fall 2025 |
|
The Early Republic |
Spring 2024 |
|
The Civil War and Reconstruction |
Fall 2024 |
|
History Methods |
Spring 2025 |
Baylor University
|
United States History to 1877 (Teacher of Record) |
(Spring 2023 [F2F], Fall 2022 [F2F]) |
|
United States in Global Perspective (Teacher of Record) |
(Spring 2023 [F2F], Fall 2022 [F2F], Spring 2022 [F2F], Fall 2021 [F2F], Spring 2021 [F2F], Fall 2020 [OL]) |
|
World History since 1500 (Teaching Assistant) |
(Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2019) |
SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION
2022–2024: Graduate Student Representative, American Catholic Historical Association
UNIVERSITY AND DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE
2024–2025: Health and Wellness Committee, Campbellsville University
2019–2020: History Department Graduate Student Representative, Baylor University
EXTRACURRICULAR UNIVERSITY SERVICE
2019–2020: Graduate Undergraduate Mentor Program, Baylor University
2019–2020: Graduate School Association Alternate Representative, Baylor University
2015–2016: Graduate Undergraduate Mentor Program, Baylor University
EXTRACURRICULAR UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS
2018–2019: Conyers Scholars Program
LANGUAGES
German: Advanced Reading Proficiency