Susan Reynolds
Associate Professor of Catholic Studies
Degrees
PhD, Boston College, 2018
MTS, Boston College, 2013
MEd, University of Notre Dame, 2011
BA, University of Notre Dame, 2009
Phone
(404) 727-7727
EMAILOn research leave for the 2025-26 academic year.
Dr. Susan Reynolds is a Catholic theologian and ethnographer whose research examines the intersection of ecclesiology and lived practice. Her first book, People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (Fordham University Press, 2023), won the 2024 Best Book Award by the College Theology Society. People Get Ready draws on years of parish-based fieldwork in Boston to examine the question of community in a racially and culturally diverse church, arguing for the retrieval of solidarity as an ecclesial virtue. Her 2023 article, “‘I Will Surely Have You Deported:’ Undocumenting Clergy Sexual Abuse in an Immigrant Community” (Religion and American Culture) was awarded both the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award for New Scholars by the Catholic Theological Society of America and the New Scholar Essay Prize for Catholic Studies in the Americas by Fordham University’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her current book project, a wide-ranging study of stations of the cross on the edges of church and society, is supported by a grant from the Louisville Institute.
Reynolds’ work on race, culture, migration, and parish life in American Catholicism has appeared in peer-reviewed and public-facing journals including Religion and American Culture, US Catholic Historian, American Catholic Studies, and The Atlantic. She is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine and regularly contributes to national conversations on religion and public life in the media, including NPR, NBC, and PBS NewsHour.
Reynolds was the 2022 recipient of the “On Eagle’s Wings” Excellence in Teaching Award, given to a faculty member by the Candler School of Theology graduating class. Prior to theological studies, Reynolds taught middle school in Brownsville, Texas. She is a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, serves on the Board of the College Theology Society, and helps to coordinate the Seminar on Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse in the American Academy of Religion.
BOOKS
People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury, New York: Fordham University Press, 2023
CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES
“‘I Will Surely Have You Deported:’ Undocumenting Clergy Sexual Abuse in Immigrant Communities,” Religion and American Culture 33, no. 2 (2023): 1-34.
Response to People Get Ready review symposium, American Catholic Studies 134, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 53-63, with essays by Eileen Markey, Maureen O’Connell, Brett C. Hoover, and Dennis Doyle.
“Water, Mud, Fire: Bringing Mass to Matamoros,” Commonweal 150, no. 8 (September 2023): 8-9.
“On Tradition and the Passion Play,” Commonweal, March 2023
“‘This is not nostalgia:’ Contesting the Politics of Sentimentality in Boston’s 2004 Parish Closure Protests,” U.S. Catholic Historian 41, no. 1 (2023): 71-92.
“Selfhood and Its Limits,” contribution to Syndicate Network forum on Danielle Tumminio Hansen’s Conceiving Family. February 15, 2023.
“Solidarity as Slow Conversion,” Missiology 51, no. 1 (2023): 31–45.
“Book review: Anna Rowlands, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times“ in Scottish Journal of Theology (2023)
“Are We Protagonists Yet?” in Commonweal, 149, no. 11: 10-11, December 2022
“The Paradox of Public Scholarship” in Commonweal 149, no. 8: 9, September 2022
“Selva J. Raj, Solidarity and the Language of Ritual” in All the Ends of the Earth: Challenge and Celebration of Global Catholicism, Orbis, 2020
“Latino/a/x/o Christian Theologies” in The Oxford Handbook of Latino/a Christianities in the United States, Oxford University Press, 2020
“Beyond Unity In Diversity: Race, Culture, and Communion Ecclesiology in U.S. Catholicism,” American Catholic Studies, vol. 130, no. 4, 2019
“Fieldwork in Ecclesial Borderlands: Culture, Community, and Belonging in a Multiethnic Boston Parish,” Exchange, vol. 48, no. 3, July 19, 2019
“Vigil-Keeping,” in Of Womb and Tomb: Prayer in Time of Infertility, Miscarriage, and Stillbirth, GIA, January 01, 2019
“The Integration of Hispanic Parishioners in U.S. Catholic parishes with Hispanic Ministry: Results from a National Survey,” Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, vol. 46, no. 4, January 17, 2019
“Cultivating Young Hispanic Catholic Leaders,” Our Catholic Children: Ministry with Hispanic Youth and Young Adults/Nuestros jovenes catolicos: Pastoral Juvenil Hispana en los Estados Unidos, 2018
“Ministering With Authenticity,” C21 Resources: A Hope to Share: Young Adults and Our Church, 2018
Spanish to English Translation,”Medellín: A Spiritual Experience,” in The Grace of Medellín: History, Theology, and Legacy: Reflections on the Significance of Medellín for the Church in the United States, Convivium, 2018
“Catholic Liturgy and Prenatal Loss: Ritual, Ambiguity, and the Miscarrying Body,” in Liturgy + Power, Orbis, 2017
“From the Site of the Empty Tomb: Approaching the Hidden Grief of Pregnancy Loss.” New Theology Review, vol. 28, no. 2, 2016
“‘For there is still a vision:’ Metz’s Apocalyptic Eschatology and the Practice of Lament,” Lumen et Vita, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015
“‘I AM has sent me to you:’ How Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of the divine names illuminates the way in which he reconciles impassibility and compassion in God,” Lumen et Vita, vol. 3, no. 1, 2013
2024 Best Book Award by the College Theology Society for People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury
New Scholar Essay Prize for Catholic Studies in the Americas by Fordham University’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, 2023
The Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award, Catholic Theological Society of America, 2023
Scholarly Writing and Publishing Fund Grant, Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, Emory University, 2019
Research Grant, Brewer Fund for Communities and Congregations Research, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, 2018
Doctoral Fellowship, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, 2013-2017
AmeriCorps Education Awards Program Educational Grant, 2011
Alliance for Catholic Education Teaching Fellowship, University of Notre Dame, 2009-2011
Lou Holtz Leadership Full Scholarship Award, University of Notre Dame, 2008
International Research Grant for research in Uganda, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2008
Kellogg Institute for International Studies International Scholars Program, University of Notre Dame, 2006-2008
Introduction to Practical Theology
Catholicism in America: Migration, Transnationalism, and Devotion
Methods of Social and Congregational Analysis
In the media
May 8, 2025
Atlanta theologians, Catholic leaders, and Christians react to new American Pope
Atlanta News First
May 1, 2025
A battle for the soul of the Catholic Church: What's at stake in conclave this week
USA Today
