Brekus received a
Bachelor of Arts degree in history and literature from
Harvard University in 1985,[1][2][3] having submitted the honors thesis Women in the Chartist Movement: Historical and Literary Images.[4] She received a
Doctor of Philosophy degree in
American studies from
Yale University[3] with the dissertation "Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches": Female Preaching and Evangelical Religion in America, 1740–1845.[5]
Brekus' works have included a history of female
preaching in America entitled Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845 (1998) and a history of early evangelicalism based on a woman's
diaries entitled Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (2013). She has also edited volumes on The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past (2007) and, with
W. Clark Gilpin, American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity (2011).[6] She has been involved in efforts to reprise women's role within American religious history, organizing the first
conference on the topic in the United States in 2003.[7]
American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity. Edited with Gilpin, W. Clark. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. 2011.
ISBN978-0-8078-3515-9.
Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 2013.
ISBN978-0-300-18290-3.
Sarah Osborn's Collected Writings. Editor. By Osborn, Sarah. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 2017.
ISBN978-0-300-18289-7.
Book chapters
"Restoring the Divine Order to the World: Religion and the Family in the Antebellum Woman's Rights Movement". In
Carr, Anne; Van Leeuwen, Mary Stewart. Religion, Feminism, and the Family. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. 1996. pp. 166–182.
ISBN978-0-664-25512-1.
"The Revolution in the Churches: Women's Religious Activism in the Early American Republic". In Hutson, James H. Religion and the New Republic: Faith in the Founding of America. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2000. pp. 115–136.
ISBN978-0-8476-9434-1.
"Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing". In
Bunge, Marcia J.The Child in Christian Thought. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2001. pp. 300–328.
ISBN978-0-8028-4693-8.
"Female Evangelism in the Early Methodist Movement, 1784–1845". In
Hatch, Nathan O.; Wigger, John H. Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture. Nashville, Tennessee: Kingswood Books. 2001. pp. 135ff.
ISBN978-0-687-04854-0.
"Interpreting American Religion". In Barney, William L. A Companion to 19th-Century America. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. 2001. pp. 317–333.
doi:
10.1002/9780470998472.ch23.
ISBN978-0-631-20985-0.
"Remembering Jonathan Edwards's Ministry to Children". In Kling, David W.; Sweeney, Douglas A. Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad: Historical Memories, Cultural Movements, Global Horizons. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. 2003. pp. 40ff.
ISBN978-1-57003-519-7.
"Sarah Osborn's World: Popular Christianity in Eighteenth-Century America". In Wilkins, Christopher I. The Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology. 6. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. 2003.
ISBN978-0-9702346-2-9.
"Protestant Female Preaching in the United States". In Keller, Rosemary Skinner;
Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America. 2. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. 2006.
ISBN978-0-253-34687-2.
"Introduction: Searching for Women in Narratives of American Religious History". In Brekus, Catherine A. The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. 2007. pp. 1–50.
doi:
10.5149/9780807867990_brekus.
ISBN978-0-8078-5800-4.
"Sarah Osborn's Enlightenment: Reimagining Eighteenth-Century Intellectual History". In Brekus, Catherine A. The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. 2007. pp. 108–141.
doi:
10.5149/9780807867990_brekus.
ISBN978-0-8078-5800-4.
"Who Makes History? American Religious Historians and the Problem of Historical Agency". Fides et Historia. 47 (2): 93–100. 2015.
ISSN0884-5379.
"The Work We Have to Do: Mark Noll's Contributions to Writing the History of American Christianity". Fides et Historia. 48 (2): 23–28. 2016.
ISSN0884-5379.
^Brekus, Catherine A. (1985). Women in the Chartist Movement: Historical and Literary Images (AB thesis). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University.
OCLC12282930.
^Brekus, Catherine Anne (1993). "Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches": Female Preaching and Evangelical Religion in America, 1740–1845 (PhD diss.). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University.
OCLC35452695.
^"Catherine A. Brekus". University of Chicago Divinity School. University of Chicago. Archived from
the original on 26 April 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2013.