Catholics in the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History
R. Scott Appleby and Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Abstract
Over the course of the twentieth century, Catholics, who make up a quarter of the population of the United States, made significant contributions to American culture, politics, and society. They built powerful political machines in Chicago, Boston, and New York; led influential labor unions; created the largest private school system in the nation; and established a vast network of hospitals, orphanages, and charitable organizations. Yet in both scholarly and popular works of history, the distinctive presence and agency of Catholics as Catholics is almost entirely absent. This book brings toget ... More
Over the course of the twentieth century, Catholics, who make up a quarter of the population of the United States, made significant contributions to American culture, politics, and society. They built powerful political machines in Chicago, Boston, and New York; led influential labor unions; created the largest private school system in the nation; and established a vast network of hospitals, orphanages, and charitable organizations. Yet in both scholarly and popular works of history, the distinctive presence and agency of Catholics as Catholics is almost entirely absent. This book brings together American historians of race, politics, social theory, labor, and gender to address this lacuna, detailing in cogent and wide-ranging essays how Catholics negotiated gender relations, raised children, thought about war and peace, navigated the workplace and the marketplace, and imagined their place in the national myth of origins and ends. A long overdue corrective, the book restores Catholicism to its rightful place in the American story.
Keywords:
Catholics,
American culture,
American politics,
American society,
gender relations,
Catholicism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801451409 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801451409.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
R. Scott Appleby, editor
University of Notre Dame
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, editor
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