About
Dr. Joseph Esparza is an Instructor of Catholic Studies at Carroll College's Catholic Studies Program. He specializes in US History, the American West, the History of Science, Intellectual, Political, and Environmental History, and how all these expansive topics integrate with the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. He teaches courses at Caroll that sit at the intersection of history, culture, and Catholic thought. In these classes, the study of history is a profoundly moral act that helps answer fundamental questions about both universal and particular human experiences, and provides a context for engaging contemporary cultural issues. He is interested in what it means to live virtuously with both the human and natural world, as well as in studying history in light of Catholic principles. These principles include understanding the complexity of a shared and historic human condition, and exploring objective good and evil in history, while also understanding the subjective human person in the past. Dr. Esparza's approach to history is largely based upon a theological-anthropological framework of the human person, the use of historical contingency and contextualization, and critical inquiry of the past.
His research and publications are centered on the histories of the American West, the environment, politics, and ideas. His current book project, "Landmark Mountains: A Vertical History of Empire-Building and Nation-Making in the American West," is a reinterpretation of American and Western history from the vertical axis. He looks at mountains as both material and cultural spaces and argues that mountains have been sites to define over and over again what America is, and the role of the citizen within it. By examining the unsettled meaning of mountains in the republic, virtuous citizens can reimagine the nation's mountains as landscapes for a future of freedom and responsibility.
Beyond the classroom, Dr. Esparza works in Public History, Native American Ministry, and Youth Ministry. He is passionate about outdoor leadership, and is an accomplished mountaineer, backcountry skier, and more mediocre mediocre mountain biker and rock climber.
