Dermot Quinn Professor of History & Graduate Program Director
Address: 337 Fahy Hall
Phone: (973) 275-2774
E-mail: quinnder@shu.edu
I’ve been at Seton Hall since 1990 teaching a variety of courses but specializing mainly in British and Irish history. I also teach early modern intellectual history for the university’s Honors Program. Last but not least, I’m the Graduate Studies director for the History Department. All in all, they keep me busy.
I’ve written three books and am working on my fourth. The first, Patronage and Piety: English Roman Catholics and Politics, 1850-1900 (Stanford University Press 1993) is a version of my Oxford doctoral thesis. The second, Understanding Northern Ireland (Baseline Books, 1993) makes an absurdly ambitious claim in its title that only a native like myself could offer with a straight face. The third, The Irish in New Jersey: Four Centuries of American Life (Rutgers University Press, 2004) reflects a recently discovered and hugely fascinating enthusiasm. My latest project is to write the sesquicentennial history of Seton Hall. If I hadn’t so many other things to do it would have been done already.
My last hat is Catholic thought. I’m associate editor of The Chesterton Review and have written and spoken extensively on Chesterton and his circle. If more people knew GKC the world would be a wiser – and funnier – place.
Education
- Doctor of Philosophy New College, University of Oxford, 1986
- B.A., Trinity College, Dublin 1981
Courses at Seton Hall
- HIST 1201 Western Civilization I
- HIST 1202 Western Civilization II
- HIST 3243 Early Modern Britain
- HIST 3254 Modern Britain
- HIST 3243 Early Modern Ireland
- HIST 3253 Modern Ireland
- Honors Colloquium
Representative Publications
Books:
The Irish in New Jersey: Four Centuries of American Life (Rutgers University Press, 2004)
(winner, New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, Non-fiction Book of the Year, 2005)
Patronage and Piety: The Politics of English Roman Catholicism, 1850-1900 (Stanford University Press/Macmillan, 1993), xvi & 277
Understanding Northern Ireland (Baseline Books, Manchester, UK, 1993), i & 114
Articles and chapters in books
“Religion and The Conservative Mind” in The Political Science Reviewer, Volume XXXV, 2006, pp. 200-229.
“Reaching for Something Beyond” in Modern Age: A Quarterly Review, Volume 48, Number 1, Winter 2006, pp. 68-71
Introduction to G.K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions (IHS Press, 2003), pp.15-21
“Chesterton and the Resurrection of Ireland” in The Chesterton Review Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 107-135
Introduction to Christopher Dawson, Dynamics of World History (ISI Books, Wilmington, DE, 2002), pp. vii-xxix
“Christopher Dawson and the Historical Imagination” in The Chesterton Review November 2000, pp. 471-489
“Driving without Destination: A Distributist Journey in New York State” in The Chesterton Review August 2000, pp. 305-320.
“The Irish in New Jersey” in Michael Glazier (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Irish in America (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. 666-676
“Rude and Religious Irish: The Cult of Wandering Saints in the Middle Ages” in Faith and Reason Vols.XXIV-XXV, 1999-2000, pp. 3-29
Introduction to Wilhelm Ropke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market (ISI Books, Wilmington DE, 1998), pp. XI-XVIII
"Christopher Dawson and the Catholic Idea of History" in S. Caldecott and J. Morrill (eds.) Between Time and Eternity: Christopher Dawson and the Catholic Idea of History (T&T Clark 1997), pp. 69-92
