New Books for a New Nation: Jesuit Library Building in 19th-Century Chicago

Exiled European-born Jesuits founded a network of Catholic colleges across the United States in the century following the restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1814. At the heart of these colleges were libraries. Dr Kyle Roberts will talk about a collaborative teaching and research project to reconstruct the library of one such school, St Ignatius College (precursor to Loyola University Chicago). Working at the intersection of library, urban, and religious history, Roberts will explore how these libraries reveal the centrality of print to nineteenth-century Catholicism and the transnational, hybrid identities of urban American Catholics, balancing allegiances to the state, homeland, and global Catholic Church.

Kyle Roberts is the Associate Director of Library & Museum Programming of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum. Prior to coming to the APS, Dr. Roberts was an Associate Professor of Public History and New Media and Director of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at Loyola University Chicago. A prize-winning scholar and educator of Atlantic World religion, print, and library history, he is the author or editor of several books, including Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 (Chicago, 2016), and digital humanities projects, including the Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project (2012-present).

This chat originally aired at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, April 1, 2021.