Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

About Me: I teach American History (with an emphasis on women and gender) at Roanoke College where I am currently the John R. Turbyfill Professor of History. My research field is 20th century American Catholicism, specifically the history of laywomen in the 1960s and 1970s. My first book, Catholic and Feminist: the Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement (UNC Press, 2008) is the first history of Catholic feminism in the United States. My current project focuses on moderate Catholic laywomen and their reevaluation of “Catholic womanhood” in the years following the Second Vatican Council (1965-1975).

Recent Publications: The Laywoman Project: Negotiating Catholic Womanhood after Vatican II, 1960-1980 (Under advance contract with the University of North Carolina Press).

“Learning to Bloom Where You’re Planted: Adapting Vocation to the Specifics of Place,” in Jason Mahn ed., The Vocation of Lutheran Higher Education (Lutheran University Press, 2016).

“‘Woman – Go Forth!’: Catholic Women’s Organizations and their Clergy Advisors in the time of the ‘Emerging Laywoman,’” U.S. Catholic Historian 32 (4) Fall 2014, 151-173.

“Helping Women Achieve their Full Stature: Feminism and the NCCW,” The American Catholic History Classroom, Fall 2014 (digital resource)

http://cuomeka.wrlc.org/exhibits/show/feminism-and-the-nccw/feminism-and-the-nccw/nccw-50th-anniversary-executiv.

“‘This is Our Challenge! We will Pursue It’: the National Council of Catholic Women, the Feminist Movement, and the Second Vatican Council, 1960-1975” in Jeremy Bonner and Mary Beth Connolly eds., Rediscovering the Community of Faith: Catholic Action, the Second Vatican Council and the Transformation of American Lay Identity, 1929-1979 (Fordham University Press, 2014).