Richard Yoder

I am a historian of religion, gender, and disability in early modern and modern Europe. My research examines the Jansenist convulsionnaires of eighteenth-century France, a radical sect of millenarian Catholics distinguished by women’s leadership, apocalyptic prophecies, and violent rituals. I read the convulsionnaire movement as a privileged site for marginalized voices and the reconfiguration of gender norms within French Catholicism. By locating the movement’s role as a counterintuitive point of convergence for the Medical and Catholic Enlightenments, I position them at the heart of the larger epistemic process known to historians and cultural theorists as “disenchantment.” More broadly, l am interested in the history of the supernatural within modernity. In my previous scholarly life, I have had training in both Religious Studies and Theology, and I see my work as engaging critically with both these fields.

Publications:

“Women, Miracles, and the Church of Utrecht: 1724-1734.” In Lay Agency in the Context of Ecclesiastical Crisis: The Case of the Utrecht Schism (1723/24). Ed. Genji Yasuhira, Dick Schoon, and Peter-Ben Smit. Leiden: Brill. Accepted and forthcoming.

Jansenism: An International Anthology. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2024. French Translator and Co-Editor with Shaun Blanchard

“From the Dove to the Eagle: Jansenist Visual Culture Between Piety and Polemic.” The Catholic Historical Review, 107, no. 4 (Fall 2021). Recipient of the 2021 Peter Guilday Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association.  

Awards and Service:

2025 — The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

2024 – Fulbright Open Study/Research Grant, France

2024 – The Chateaubriand Fellowship, The French Embassy in America (declined)

2024 – Graduate Student Paper Award, for “Women, Miracles, and the Church of Utrecht: 1724-1734,” Penn State Religious Studies Initiative

2024 – The E-tu Zen Sun Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Penn State Department of History

2024 – The Marjorie M. and Lancelot L. Farrar Memorial Award, The Society for French Historical Studies

2023 — President, History Graduate Student Association (HGSA)

2023 — Mother Theodore Guerin Research Travel Grant, The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame

2023 — Penn State Committee on Early Modern Studies (CEMS) Grad Student Award, 2nd Place

2022 — John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award, American Catholic Historical Association

2022 — Penn State Liberal Arts Research and Graduate Studies (RGSO) Research Grant

2022 — Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant for Research in European, African, or Asian History, American Historical Association (AHA)

2022 — Knight Fellowship, The Pennsylvania State University

2021 — Charles and Harriet Pencak Endowment, The Pennsylvania State University

2019 — Ted H. and Tracy Winfree McCourtney Family Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in American History, The Pennsylvania State University

Recent Courses: 

HIST 21: American Civilization from 1877

HIST 493: History of Death and Mourning

HIST 10: World History to 1500 

HIST 103: The History of Madness, Mental Illness, and Psychiatry [online] 

Advisor: 

Ronne Po-chia Hsia