Alexander DeWitt, SJ

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. My research centers on the history of religion in early modern Europe, especially the experiences of marginalized religious communities, the transformation and endurance of religious ideas across time, and the place of religion within the field of European intellectual history more broadly. My entry into this field has focused primarily on Catholics in early modern Britain and Ireland, particularly during my graduate studies at Fordham University. I am currently expanding this work to include interreligious and interconfessional perspectives across the early modern world at a time when many regions in Europe were experiencing an explosion of religious diversity. My guiding motivation is to understand how religions, their ideas, and their adherents changed across periods of institutional, political, and intellectual transition. How did believers reinvent themselves and the structures that bound their communities together? Why did they continue to believe (or not) in the face of structural opposition? I am convinced that such histories might help to articulate how religious ideas continue to influence our present age in hidden and not-so-hidden ways and how belief in general is an essential component of the human experience.

Research Interests

• History of Religion
• History of Ideas
• Intellectual History
• Cross-confessional Christianity
• Interreligious History
• Marginalized Religious Communities

Education

• University of Toronto, Regis College, Toronto, ON - Master of Divinity/STB, 2026
• Fordham University, Bronx, NY - Master of Arts, History, 2021
• Rice University, Houston, TX - Bachelor of Arts, Classical Studies (Language Specialization), 2015

Publications

Book Chapters

• “The correspondence of William Good SJ and the Jesuit mission in Elizabethan Ireland, 1564–c.1570” in The Jesuit Mission in Early Modern Ireland, 1560–1760. Eds. Mary Ann Lyons and Brian Mac Cuarta SJ. Four Courts Press (2022).

Translations

• Transcript Editor, Digital Indipetae Database: Jesuit Petitions for Mission. Ed. Andreas Motsch. The Portal to Jesuit Studies, Boston College (Continual Publication), https://indipetae.bc.edu/. [Latin]
• Translator, A Journey of Faith Promoting Justice (1891-2024). Ed. Xavier Jeyaraj. General Curia of the Society of Jesus (2025). [Latin]

Book Reviews

• Peter Lake and Michael Questier, All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England, in Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 2021, 90(179): 199–201.
• Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez, Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II, in Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 2022, 91(181): 351–354.

Presentations

• “For Edification: Three Portraits of the Ideal Student at the English Colleges of the Society of Jesus.” Toronto Jesuit History Research Group, University of Toronto, 22 November 2024.

Languages

• English (Native)
• Spanish (C1, Reading, Writing, Speaking)
• Italian (C1, Reading, Writing, Speaking)
• French (B2, Reading, Writing, Speaking)
• German (B1, Reading, Writing, Speaking)
• Latin (Advanced Reading)
• Greek (Advanced Reading)