In March 2023, Julie Chamberlain defended her dissertation, titled “Mother Teresa and American Catholics' Mission to the World: Foreign Missions and Humanitarianism in the Mid-Twentieth Century.” Melani McAlister is her dissertation advisor, and Michael Barnett and Elaine Peña sit on her committee. 

Julie’s dissertation examines American Catholics’ encounters with one of the most famous global icons of the twentieth century: Mother Teresa. In particular, it charts Mother Teresa’s rise as an icon of both missionary work and humanitarianism within U.S. Catholic circles between the 1950s and early 1970s — decades in which she was not yet well-known among the broader American public. Drawing on a variety of Catholic archives, it places Mother Teresa’s emergence in American life within the context of U.S. foreign relations, U.S. Catholicism, and U.S. religious history more generally. It demonstrates how U.S. Catholics and their institutions, particularly Catholic Relief Services and the Catholic press, enabled Mother Teresa’s expanding global reach and renown at a time when U.S. Catholics were becoming powerful international actors. It also reveals the ways that Mother Teresa, in return, became a vessel through which U.S. Catholics came to understand their evolving role in the world. These forces helped set the stage for Mother Teresa to burst onto the larger U.S. scene in the 1970s. Overall, my research provides insight into a highly influential figure who is virtually absent in studies of U.S. history and, more broadly, into the ways that religion intersected with Americans’ expanding presence on the global stage in the mid-twentieth century.

Julie’s research has been supported by multiple academic associations and organizations. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Religion’s International Dissertation Research Grant as well as a Cosmos Club Foundation Scholar. Her work has also been supported by Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, the Study for the Social Scientific Study of Religion, the Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs at Texas A&M, and the Jeffrey C. Kasch Foundation. This and other support has enabled her to conduct research across the United States and abroad, including in Calcutta, India, where Mother Teresa’s “headquarters” are located. 

At GWU, Julie taught a variety of courses on American history. She taught the undergraduate lecture course on U.S. Religion and Politics and undergraduate seminar based on her dissertation, which was titled ‘Religious Icons in American Culture and Politics.” Additionally, she served as a Teaching Assistant for U.S.-Middle East Cultural Encounters, America in the Sixties, The American City, Twentieth Century U.S. Immigration, Sexuality in U.S. History, and Early American Cultural History.

Prior to GWU, Julie received her M.A. in Religion from Duke University and her B.A. in Philosophy and Spanish from Auburn University. At Duke, Julie focused primarily on American evangelicalism. For her M.A. thesis, titled “New Monasticism, Racial Reconciliation, and the Search for Legitimation,” she conducted a yearlong ethnographic project with an intentional community of Christians in Durham, North Carolina, who are part of a burgeoning movement known as New Monasticism. In it, she explored how the members of the Rutba House–preponderantly white, middle class, and evangelical–practiced racial reconciliation and “submission” in an attempt to subvert white power and legitimate their place within the black church tradition. This research contributes to growing scholarship on “progressive evangelicalism,” as well as to the study of religion and race in the United States. 

Julie is happy to discuss her work, especially regarding potential conference collaborations. You can reach her through email at [email protected].