Dr. Neary’s work explores the history of Bishop Bernard Sheil’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), which saw tens of thousands of children from Chicago of all races and religions participate in sports.

“Neary examines the understudied world of youth athletics, finding significant interracial cooperation by the mid-twentieth century. His well-researched study allows us to better understand the dynamics of—and limits to—such cooperation in a city marked by intense residential and racial segregation.”—John T. McGreevy, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame

“Neary has produced a work of wide reach and interest—a history of religion and race, sports and northern urban culture, and youthful engagement around issues of central significance to the mid-twentieth-century US society and politics. It is not only exceptionally well researched and analytically careful and illuminative, but also written with an enviable clarity and simplicity of style. Neary helps fill out the storyline of John T. McGreevy’s foundational work on US Catholicism and race, while advancing in a more thoroughgoing historical key the kind of analysis of Catholicism and sports culture undertaken in Julie Byrne’s O God of Players.”—James P. McCartin, director, Fordham Center on Religion and Culture

“Neary’s Crossing Parish Boundaries tells an unexpected story. Previous historians have depicted the high walls of segregation dividing white ethnic neighborhoods from Chicago’s African American ghettos. Yet in the middle decades of the twentieth century, Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization promoted interracial sports. In an era otherwise characterized by deep ethnic tensions, even violence, especially between the children of immigrants and the new black migrants to the city, Neary shows us how local Catholic leaders and parishioners deliberately and successfully resisted the bigotry of their times. Crossing Parish Boundaries is a fine book, merging urban history, social history, and sports history in an elegant and insightful narrative.”—Elliot Gorn, Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History, Loyola University Chicago

Dr. Neary obtained an A.B. in American Studies from Georgetown University and both a M.A. and a  Ph.D. from Loyola University, Chicago.