New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era ISBN: 9781469605999 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / University of North Carolina Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Religious Studies; History of Christianity History of Judaism;
American Catholic women rarely surface as protagonists in histories of the United States. Offering a new perspective, Kathleen Sprows Cummings places Catholic women at the forefront of two defining developments of the Progressive Era: the emergence of the "New Woman" and Catholics' struggle to define their place in American culture. Cummings highlights four women: Chicago-based journalist Margaret Buchanan Sullivan; Sister Julia McGroarty, SND, founder of Trinity College in Washington, D.C., one of the first Catholic women's colleges; Philadelphia educator Sister Assisium McEvoy, SSJ; and Katherine Eleanor Conway, a Boston editor, public figure, and antisuffragist. Cummings uses each woman's story to explore how debates over Catholic identity were intertwined with the renegotiation of American gender roles.