Chris Cantwell is a historian and former museum professional who is committed to telling compelling, inclusive, and meaningful stories about the American experience. Trained as a scholar of religion, his research has explored the curious history of the Little Brown Church in the Vale, the eclectic life of a Sunday school teacher who also helped found Chicago's first neighborhood historical society, and the workplace relations of a religious publishing house. As a digital and public historian, he has curated exhibits on Kansas City's LGBTQ history, developed a crisis collecting initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is currently supervising an ongoing effort to document the rapid closure of America's religious congregations. More recently, Cantwell has joined the millions of Americans who have taken an interest in birdwatching, and is currently at work on a history of the United States that centers birds as the main characters in our nation's history. Before joing Loyola University Chicago, he was on faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A full curriculum vita is below.