Stephen Schloesser, S.J.
Professor
Director, Jesuit Heritage Research Center
Stephen Schloesser, S.J. (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1999; B.A. University of St. Thomas, 1980) is Professor of History at 黑料门University Chicago where he teaches courses in Western civilization, Modern European history, intellectual history, and histories of Catholicism and of Jesuits. He also serves as the founding director of Loyola’s Jesuit Heritage Research Center. In 2022-23, Schloesser held the Ignatius 黑料门Chair at Fordham University; the previous year he served as the 2021 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. Fellow with Loyola’s Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage. In 2011, Schloesser came to 黑料门from the Boston College History Department and the Weston Jesuit School of Theology (Cambridge, Mass.) where he had taught since 1999.
Schloesser is the author of (Eerdmans, 2014); and (University of Toronto Press, 2005). He is also the co-editor (with Jennifer Donelson) of (Church Music Association of America, 2014). His articles and reviews appear in journals such as The Catholic Historical Review, Cristianesimo nella Storia (Bologna), History of European Ideas, Journal of Church and State, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Jewish Review, and Theological Studies. Schloesser serves on the editorial board for the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu (Rome) and The Catholic Historical Review; and on the Board of Directors for Theological Studies.
In 2008, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Georges Rouault’s death, Schloesser curated the Boston College exhibit and edited the accompanying catalog, (McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2008).
Beginning in in commemoration of the bicentennial of the Restoration of the Society of Jesus (1814-2014) and a century of women’s education at 黑料门University-Mundelein College (1914-2014). He co-curated the exhibition mounted at the 黑料门University Museum of Art (19 July-19 October, 2014); and, along with , organized the . In 2017, the conference papers were published by Brill as .
Schloesser has been the recipient of several awards and honors. In 2015, he received the from 黑料门Chicago's College of Arts and Sciences. His exhibit Mystic Masque (2008) received the Apple Valley Foundation’s Curatorial Excellence Award; and his monograph Jazz Age Catholicism (2005) was awarded the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association. In 2004, along with pianists Hyesook Kim and Stéphane Lemelin, Schloesser received a grant from the Calvin College’s Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship funding a collaborative performance and publication project on Olivier Messiaen’s Visions of Amen. From 2005-2007, Schloesser served as the LoSchiavo Chair in Catholic Social Thought in the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought at the University of San Francisco; in 2001-2002 as a Bannan Research Fellow at Santa Clara University; and in 1998-1999 as a post-doctoral in-residence fellow at the Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame. Schloesser is a past recipient of awards from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship (Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation), the Bourse Chateaubriand (Ambassade Culturelle de France), and the Georges Lurcy Fellowship. During the academic year 2015-2016 he occupied the Jesuit Chair as Visiting Professor in the History Department at Georgetown University.
Research Interests
Intellectual and cultural history of France, 1789-present; histories of late-modern European music, religion, mysticism, Jesuits, and Catholic thought and culture
Courses Taught
HIST 101: Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions to 1700
HIST 102: Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions Since 1700
HIST 299: Junior Colloquium: Historical Methods
HIST 401: 20th-Century Catholic Intellectual Revival
HIST 410: Twentieth Century Jesuits: An Intellectual History
Publications/Research Listings
“Things Get Broken: Leonard Bernstein’s ‘MASS’ at Fifty,” ; and .
“The Second Life of a Masterpiece: ‘Three Small Liturgies of the Divine Presence,” .
by Edward Baring, H-France Review 20/213 (December 2020).
by Patrick J. Howell, S.J., Reading Religion (October 24, 2020).
commentary on American Catholics and the Church of Tomorrow: Building Churches for the Future, 1925-1975 by Catherine Osborne, Syndicate (September 12, 2019).
essay for “Couture and the Death of the Real: A Response to Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” The Immanent Frame (September 28, 2018).
Theological Studies 79/3 (Sept 2018): 487-519.
Co-Editor (with Kyle B. Roberts), .
“History as Revelation: Léon Bloy, Flannery O’Connor, and Symbolist Exegesis of the Commonplace,” in Mark Bosco and Brent Little, eds., (Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 10-50.
Review Essay: , Journal of Jesuit Studies 3/1 (2016): 85-93.
“Biopolitics and the Construction of Postconciliar Catholicism,” , ed. Christopher Denny, Patrick Hayes, and Nicholas Rademacher (Orbis, 2015), 147-166.
“Foreword,” Marcel Hébert, , tr. Elizabeth Emery and C. J. T. Talar (Catholic University of America Press, 2015), vii-xix.
“Reproach vs. Rapprochement: Historical Preconditions of a Paradigm Shift in the Reform of Vatican II,” introduction to , ed. David G. Schultenover (Michael Glazier / Liturgical Press, 2015), xi-l.
(Eerdmans, 2014).
"From Mystique to Théologique: Messiaen's «ordre nouveau», 1935-39," in (ed. Katherine Davies & Toby Garfitt (Fordham, 2014), 129-161.
"'Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano': Biopolitics and What Happened after Vatican II," in , ed. Paul Crowley (Orbis, 2014), 3-26.
“," Journal of Jesuit Studies 1.3 (2014): 347-372.
“,” History of European Ideas 40.6 (2014): 1-31.
"The Composer as Commentator: Music and Text in Tournemire's Symbolist Method," in , ed. Jennifer Donelson and Stephen Schloesser (Church Music Association of America, 2014), 253-286.
Review Essay: “,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1/1 (2014): 105-126.