“Gathering Places: Religion, Community, and Memory in the Modern City”

Christopher D. Cantwell, “Gathering Places: Religion, Community, and Memory in the Modern City”

Description

Kenwood Boulevard runs along UWM’s southern edge and boasts four stately places of worship. But none of these buildings are occupied by the communities who built. My research focuses on this dynamic, documenting the ways in which religions and cities make each other. My current book project explores how rural migration to urban spaces at the turn of the twentieth century helped make modern evangelicalism, while I work with Milwaukee’s religious communities to document their histories as a public historian.

Biography

Christopher D. Cantwell is an assistant professor of public and digital history. He also is an affiliate faculty member of UWM’s religious studies program, and serves on the advisory board of the Digital Humanities Lab. His work has appeared in a number of publications, and he is currently completing a manuscript on the origins of white evangelical nostalgia titled “The Bible Class Teacher: Memory and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism.”