Download or read book Queer Nuns written by Melissa M. Wilcox and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Modern-day badass drag queen superhero nuns"--"It was like this asteroid belt": the origins and growth of the sisters -- "We are nuns, silly!": serious parody as activism -- "A sacred, powerful woman": complicating gender -- "Sister outsiders": navigating whiteness -- "A secular nun": serious parody and the sacred -- New world order? -- Blooper reel -- Studying the sisters

Download or read book Florence Nightingale s Nuns written by Emmeline Garnett and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the English Catholic nuns trained by Florence Nightingale to tend to the wounded during the Crimean War, including their struggles to work in poor military hospitals and their dedication to their faith.

Download or read book Nuns written by Silvia Evangelisti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silvia Evangelisti presents the story of the women who have lived in religious communities, from the dawn of the modern age onwards - their ideals and achievements, frustrations and failures, and their attempts to reach out to the society aroundthem.

Download or read book The New Nuns written by Amy L. Koehlinger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-30 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s, a number of Catholic women religious in the United States abandoned traditional apostolic works to experiment with new and often unprecedented forms of service among non-Catholics. Amy Koehlinger explores the phenomenon of the "new nun" through close examination of one of its most visible forms--the experience of white sisters working in African-American communities. In a complex network of programs and activities Koehlinger describes as the "racial apostolate," sisters taught at African-American colleges in the South, held racial sensitivity sessions in integrating neighborhoods, and created programs for children of color in public housing projects. Engaging with issues of race and justice allowed the sisters to see themselves, their vocation, and the Church in dramatically different terms. In this book, Koehlinger captures the confusion and frustration, as well as the exuberance and delight, they experienced in their new Christian mission. Their increasing autonomy and frequent critiques of institutional misogyny shaped reforms within their institute and sharpened a post-Vatican II crisis of authority. From the Selma march to Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, Amy Koehlinger illuminates the transformative nature of the nexus of race, religion, and gender in American society.

Download or read book Sisters written by John Fialka and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-01-24 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying nuns as the first feminists and sweeping in its scope and insight, "Sisters" reveals the treasure of spiritual capital that religious women have invested in America. 25 photos.

Download or read book Rebellious Nuns written by Margaret Chowning and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nuns are hardly associated in the popular mind with rebellion and turmoil. In fact, convents have often been the scenes of conflict, but what went on behind the walls of convents was meant by the church to be mysterious. Great care was taken to prevent the "scandal" of factionalism in the nunneries from becoming widely known. This has made it very difficult to reconstruct the battles fought, the issues debated, and the relationships tested in such convents. Margaret Chowning has discovered a treasure-trove of documents that allow an intimate look at two crises that wracked the convent of La Purísima Concepción in San Miguel el Grande, New Spain (Mexico). At the heart of both rebellions were attempts by some nuns to impose a regimen of strict observance of their vows on the others, and the resistance mounted by those who had a different view of the convent and their own role in it. Would the community adopt as austere a lifestyle as they could endure, doing manual labor, suffering hunger and physical discomfort, deprived of the society of family and friends? Or would these women be allowed to lead comfortable and private lives when not at prayer? Accusations and counteraccusations flew. First one side and then the other seemed to have the upper hand. For a time, a mysterious and dramatic illness broke out among the rebellious nuns, capturing the limelight. Were they faking? Were they unconsciously influenced by their ringleader, the charismatic and manipulative young women who first experienced the "mal"? Rebellious Nuns covers the history of the convent from its founding in 1752 to the forced eviction of the nuns in 1863. While the period of rebellion is at the center of the narrative, Chowning also gives an account of the factors that led up to the crises and the rebellion's continuing repercussions on the convent in the decades to follow. Drawing on an abundance of sources, including numerous letters written by the bishop and local vicar as well as nuns of both factions, Chowning is able to give us not just the voices but the personalities of the nuns and other actors. In this way she makes it possible for us to empathize with all of them and to appreciate the complicated dynamics of having committed your life not only to God but to your community.

Download or read book And Then There Were Nuns written by Jane Christmas and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as Jane Christmas decides to enter a convent in mid-life to find out whether she is "nun material", her long-term partner Colin springs a marriage proposal on her. Determined not to let her monastic dreams be sidelined, Christmas embarks on a year long adventure to four convents-- one in Canada and three in the UK. In these communities of cloistered nuns and monks, she revels in--and at times chafes against-- the silent, simple existence she has sought off of her life.

Download or read book Escaped Nuns written by Cassandra L. Yacovazzi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just five weeks after its publication in January 1836, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, billed as an escaped nun's shocking exposé of convent life, had already sold more than 20,000 copies. The book detailed gothic-style horror stories of licentious priests and abusive mothers superior, tortured nuns and novices, and infanticide. By the time the book was revealed to be a fiction and the author, Maria Monk, an imposter, it had already become one of the nineteenth century's best-selling books. In antebellum America only one book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, outsold it. The success of Monk's book was no fluke, but rather a part of a larger phenomenon of anti-Catholic propaganda, riots, and nativist politics. The secrecy of convents stood as an oblique justification for suspicion of Catholics and the campaigns against them, which were intimately connected with cultural concerns regarding reform, religion, immigration, and, in particular, the role of women in the Republic. At a time when the term "female virtue" pervaded popular rhetoric, the image of the veiled nun represented a threat to the established American ideal of womanhood. Unable to marry, she was instead a captive of a foreign foe, a fallen woman, a white slave, and a foolish virgin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, ministers, vigilantes, politicians, and writers--male and female--forged this image of the nun, locking arms against convents. The result was a far-reaching antebellum movement that would shape perceptions of nuns, and women more broadly, in America.

Download or read book Creating Cistercian Nuns written by Anne E. Lester and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Creating Cistercian Nuns, Anne E. Lester addresses a central issue in the history of the medieval church: the role of women in the rise of the religious reform movement of the thirteenth century. Focusing on the county of Champagne in France, Lester reconstructs the history of the women’s religious movement and its institutionalization within the Cistercian order. The common picture of the early Cistercian order is that it was unreceptive to religious women. Male Cistercian leaders often avoided institutional oversight of communities of nuns, preferring instead to cultivate informal relationships of spiritual advice and guidance with religious women. As a result, scholars believed that women who wished to live a life of service and poverty were more likely to join one of the other reforming orders rather than the Cistercians. As Lester shows, however, this picture is deeply flawed. Between 1220 and 1240 the Cistercian order incorporated small independent communities of religious women in unprecedented numbers. Moreover, the order not only accommodated women but also responded to their interpretations of apostolic piety, even as it defined and determined what constituted Cistercian nuns in terms of dress, privileges, and liturgical practice. Lester reconstructs the lived experiences of these women, integrating their ideals and practices into the broader religious and social developments of the thirteenth century—including the crusade movement, penitential piety, the care of lepers, and the reform agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council. The book closes by addressing the reasons for the subsequent decline of Cistercian convents in the fourteenth century. Based on extensive analysis of unpublished archives, Creating Cistercian Nuns will force scholars to revise their understanding of the women’s religious movement as it unfolded during the thirteenth century.

Download or read book Nuns Behaving Badly written by Craig A. Monson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. Cloistered in convents, subjected to stifling hierarchy, repressed, and occasionally persecuted by their male superiors, these women circumvented authority in sometimes extraordinary ways. But tales of their transgressions have long been buried in the Vatican Secret Archive. That is, until now. In Nuns Behaving Badly, Craig A. Monson resurrects forgotten tales and restores to life the long-silent voices of these cloistered heroines. Here we meet nuns who dared speak out about physical assault and sexual impropriety (some real, some imagined). Others were only guilty of misjudgment or defacing valuable artwork that offended their sensibilities. But what unites the women and their stories is the challenges they faced: these were women trying to find their way within the Catholicism of their day and through the strict limits it imposed on them. Monson introduces us to women who were occasionally desperate to flee cloistered life, as when an entire community conspired to torch their convent and be set free. But more often, he shows us nuns just trying to live their lives. When they were crossed—by powerful priests who claimed to know what was best for them—bad behavior could escalate from mere troublemaking to open confrontation. In resurrecting these long-forgotten tales and trials, Monson also draws attention to the predicament of modern religious women, whose “misbehavior”—seeking ordination as priests or refusing to give up their endowments to pay for priestly wrongdoing in their own archdioceses—continues even today. The nuns of early modern Italy, Monson shows, set the standard for religious transgression in their own age—and beyond.

Download or read book The Red Skirt written by Patricia O'Donnell-Gibson and published by Self Publisher. This book was released on 2011-07-29 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impressionistic and dreamy, a nine-year-old girl immediately feels that she might be called by God when a Catholic missionary speaks to her third grade class at a Catholic school. The idea of this calling embeds itself into her, haunting her through elementary and high school, after which she chooses to enter the convent. Her story follows the five years she spent as an Adrian Dominican nun struggling to balance her desire for a secular life with her great fear of turning her back on God's call. Her stories are sad as well as joyous, inspiring as well as unsettling.

Download or read book If Nuns Ruled the World written by Jo Piazza and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fascinating profiles” of remarkable nuns, from an eighty-three-year-old Ironman champion to a crusader against human trafficking (Daily News [New York]). “In an age of villainy, war and inequality, it makes sense that we need superheroes,” writes Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. “And after trying Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, we may have found the best superheroes yet: Nuns.” In If Nuns Ruled the World, veteran reporter Jo Piazza overthrows the popular perception of nuns as killjoy schoolmarms, instead revealing them as the most vigorous catalysts of change in an otherwise repressive society. Meet Sister Simone Campbell, who traversed the United States challenging a Congressional budget that threatened to severely undermine the well-being of poor Americans; Sister Megan Rice, who is willing to spend the rest of her life in prison if it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; and the inimitable Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is fighting for acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church. During a time when American nuns are often under attack from the very institution to which they devote their lives—and the values of the institution itself are hotly debated—these sisters offer thought-provoking and inspiring stories. As the Daily Beast put it, “Anybody looking to argue there is a place for Catholicism in the modern world should just stand on a street corner handing out Piazza’s book.”

Download or read book Reagan s Gun Toting Nuns written by Theresa Keeley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns, Theresa Keeley analyzes the role of intra-Catholic conflict within the framework of U.S. foreign policy formulation and execution during the Reagan administration. She challenges the preponderance of scholarship on the administration that stresses the influence of evangelical Protestants on foreign policy toward Latin America. Especially in the case of U.S. engagement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Keeley argues, the bitter debate between U.S. and Central American Catholics over the direction of the Catholic Church shaped President Reagan's foreign policy. The flash point for these intra-Catholic disputes was the December 1980 political murder of four American Catholic missionaries in El Salvador. Liberal Catholics described nuns and priests in Central America who worked to combat structural inequality as human rights advocates living out the Gospel's spirit. Conservative Catholics saw them as agents of class conflict who furthered the so-called Gospel according to Karl Marx. The debate was an old one among Catholics, but, as Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns contends, it intensified as conservative, anticommunist Catholics played instrumental roles in crafting U.S. policy to fund the Salvadoran government and the Nicaraguan Contras. Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns describes the religious actors as human rights advocates and, against prevailing understandings of the fundamentally secular activism related to human rights, highlights religion-inspired activism during the Cold War. In charting the rightward development of American Catholicism, Keeley provides a new chapter in the history of U.S. diplomacy and shows how domestic issues such as contraception and abortion joined with foreign policy matters to shift Catholic laity toward Republican principles at home and abroad.

Download or read book The White Nuns written by Constance H. Berman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The White Nuns considers Cistercian women and the women who were their patrons in a clear-eyed reading of narrative texts and administrative records. In rejecting long-accepted misogynies and misreadings, Constance Hoffman Berman offers a robust model for historians writing against received traditions.

Download or read book Millennial Nuns written by The Daughters of Saint Paul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More and more people-- especially millennials-- are turning to religion as a source of comfort and solace in our increasingly chaotic world. Rather than live a cloistered life of seclusion, the Daughters of Saint Paul actively embrace social media to evangelize, collectively calling themselves the #MediaNuns. In this collective memoir, eight of these Sisters share their own discernment journeys, struggles and crises of faith that they have overcome, and episodes from their daily lives. They offer practical takeaways and tips for living a more spiritually-fulfilled life, no matter your religious affiliation. -- adapted from jacket

Download or read book Sisters in Arms written by Jo Ann McNamara and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History has, until recently, minimized the role of nuns over the centuries. In this volume, their rich lives, their work, and their importance to the Church are finally acknowledged. Jo Ann Kay McNamara introduces us to women scholars, mystics, artists, political activists, healers, and teachers - individuals whose religious vocation enabled them to pursue goals beyond traditional gender roles.

Download or read book Wayward Nuns in Medieval Literature written by Graciela S. Daichman and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1986-11-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two of the most fascinating religious figures in medieval literature are Chaucer's Prioress, Madame Eglentyne, and the Archpriest of Hita's Dona Garoza, from his Libro de Buen Amor. Over the years literary critics have interpreted these characters in a variety of ways: from gentle, mildly sinning creatures, to religious failures, to purposefully ambiguous figures with both characteristics. Daichman begins her discussion by focusing on the medieval nunnery as a social institution and finds abundant historical evidence of indecorous behavior among the nuns. Who were the women most likely to transgress their vows? What were the most common transgressions? Why did these women choose convent life in the first place? What we learn is that many women were sent to the convent against their will, or they chose to go there for reasons unrelated to religious vocation. What Daichman has done is trace the pattern of a long-forgotten literary convention, the profligate nun, reviewing first the works of the medieval moralists and satirists on the subject, and then the popular literature of the time with special emphasis on the "chanson de nonne" and the fabliau. She proves the stock character of the Wayward Nun to be as traditional as that of the Gluttonous Monk, the Disobedient Wife, or the Cuckolded Husband. In developing her premise that the profligate nun of the Middle Ages is not an isolated literary occurrence, but the reflection of the woman in the nunnery, Daichman also provides us with a deepened understanding of two well-known literary figures, Dona Garoza and Madame Eglentyne.