Author archives

Sharon M. Leon is Director of Public Projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and Associate Professor of History at George Mason University. Her research interests include the history of religion in the U.S., especially Roman Catholicism, history of science and twentieth century cultural history. She received her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and her doctorate in American Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2004. Her first book, An Image of God: the Catholic Struggle with Eugenics, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2013.

Faith and Family: Some Thoughts on Marriage and Jesuit Slaveholding

[This is a partial rendering of a talk I gave at the 2018 American Historical Association-American Society of Church History meeting in Washington DC. In fact it’s mostly the part of the talk that I didn’t actually give in person — some initial thoughts on sacramental marriage and slavery under the Jesuits.] Since September, Iâ€™ve …

What’s Next?

When I arrived in Fairfax in August 2004 to begin a post-doc at the Center for History and New Media, I didnâ€™t have plans to stay for more than a couple of years. We can all see that that was demonstrably wrong. Now, at the close of my 13th year,Â I am excited to announce …

Re-Presenting the Enslaved Community sold by the Maryland Province Jesuits in 1838

[This is an adaptation of the talk I gave for the 2016 Eleanor H. Boheim Lecture at Marquette University, sponsored by the Association of Marquette University Women on September 21, 2016.] In August 2015, Georgetown University President John DeGioia sent an email to the university community announcing the rededication of Mulledy Hall. In that email …

Returning Women to the History of Digital History

Note: A final and revised version of this essay appears as a chapter in the great collection edited by Liz Losh and Jaqueline Wernimont, Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota, 2018). Note: I’ve posted an updated version of this essay. You can still read the original, published March 7, 2016, …

Guidelines for Digital Dissertations in History

On September 25, 2015, the History and Art History Department at George Mason University voted unanimously to endorse a set of guidelines for our graduate students that set out baseline expectations for digital dissertation projects. This endorsement marked the culmination of a year of drafting and consultation between the Graduate Studies Committee, the faculty in …