Angel Cortes Completes Doctorate

Angel Cortes, PhD, Assistant Professor of History, has been a very busy man for the past decade! After earning his BA in psychology from Biola University in 1992, he immediately went into graduate school. He earned a MA in religious studies from the University of Denver and another in history from the University of Colorado.

From here, he moved to South Bend to pursue a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame. In addition to his scholarly endeavors, Cortés also worked fulltime as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Denver, the University of Colorado, and the University of Notre Dame, as an adjunct professor at Red Rocks Community College, and as an assistant professor of history at Holy Cross College.

Cortes has recently completed his dissertation entitled “Student Idealists and the Specter of Natural Science, 1870-1910.” “My dissertation examines critical normative conceptions in art, literature, and philosophy as these disciplines were developing their modern form a century ago. Specifically, my work explores “the Good, the True, and the Beautiful” in the humanities curriculum at Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of California (Berkeley) during the period 1870-1910,” says Cortes. As research, he has studied the ideas and beliefs of undergraduate students as found in notes, papers, and literary publications. He discovered that “students gravitated toward Idealism—in the form of Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Protestantism—as a way of coping with the rise of scientific naturalism.”

When he is not in the classroom, Cortes keeps himself busy writing for publications like the Journal of Psychology and Theology and numerous book reviews. He has also managed to become fluent in Spanish, French, and Italian and travel the world. He is an exceptional role model for the students at Holy Cross College, a living testament to the advice ‘follow your curiosity.’