I joined the Department of History at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York, in 1967 and retired in 2003.  Educated at Wesleyan University, Harvard University, and Columbia University, at Brooklyn College I  have taught  Early American History and the History of Religion and participated in the American Studies Program and the Studies in Religion Program.

I live in Greenwich Village, am committed to the preservation of historic neighborhoods, and am an active parishioner of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, a historic landmark that has served the Village and the City for over 175 years. My major recreations are travel, swimming, mystery novels, language study, and first-rate chocolate (not necessarily in that order).

INFORMATION

Teaching Fields:

• 17th and 18th Century Anglo-America; the American Revolution and Early Republic

• History of Christianity; Religion in America; Comparative Religious History

• American Intellectual and Cultural History

• The Shaping of the Modern World (Modern Global History)

Research Fields:

• Early Modern Anglo-American Religion

• Local History and Religious Life

• Religious Biography

Contact Information:

Office: 503s Whitehead Hall
718-951-5436
E-mail: dgerardi@brooklyn.cuny.edu or dgerardi@verizon.net

Mail Address:

Department of History
Brooklyn College, the City University of New York
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11210

COURSES: Please note that web sites for courses not offered in the current semester are inactive and will have some broken links.  I welcome comments and suggestions.

COURSE SITES:

• Core Studies 4: The Shaping of the Modern World

• History 30.2: Jesus and the Christian Tradition

• History 41.2: The Revolutionary Generation in America

• History 43.11/American Studies 62: Religious Experience in America [Fall, 2005]

PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS:

Anglo-American Religion in the "long eighteenth century" (1660s -1820s) has been the focus for most of my research and writing, although recently I have been investigating religious life in nineteenth-century New York City. I am most interested in the interactions between religious ideas and practices and social, economic, and political life. On this particular academic path I was fortunate to have three remarkable mentors: Carl Schorske at Wesleyan, for European intellectual history; Lawrence Cremin at Columbia, for doctoral training in eighteenth-century American culture; Robert Handy at Union Theological Seminary for American religious history . 

My interest in the transformation of religious traditions in changing historical contexts is the theme of my current project, a biography of the leader of Trinity Church from the time of the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century: The Rector: Morgan Dix, Trinity Parish, and the Catholic Revival in Victorian New York

Membership:

• Organization of American Historians

• American Historical Association

• Society of Church History

• Church History Society

• Guild of Scholars of the Episcopal Church

• Episcopal Historians and Archivists

Brooklyn College

History Department

Religious Studies Program