2022 awards
Mary J. Oates, Distinguished Book Award
Whereas Pursuing Truth: How Gender Shaped Catholic Education at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (Cornell University Press, 2021) has been described as crafting a narrative that places Notre Dame of Maryland within the context of Catholic higher education; and
Whereas Pursuing Truth: How Gender Shaped Catholic Education at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland explores the nuanced complexity of founding and sustaining a Catholic women’s college; and
Whereas Pursuing Truth: How Gender Shaped Catholic Education at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland provides a comprehensive and well-researched history of the first Catholic college in America to award the four-year baccalaureate degree to women; and
Whereas Pursuing Truth: How Gender Shaped Catholic Education at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland reminds the Catholic community and academic scholars of the cultural and academic importance of Catholic women’s colleges in the history of American Catholicism; and
Whereas Pursuing Truth: How Gender Shaped Catholic Education at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland provides an excellent example of an institutional history; therefore
Be it resolved that the Conference on the History of Women Religious here assembled confers on Mary J. Oates, C.S.J., Ph.D., the Distinguished Book Award. Given the twenty-eighth day of June in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-two at the conference, “Diversity and Dignity Across Time and Place,” gathered at the University of Notre Dame.
Rosa Bruno-Jofré, Distinguished Historian Award
Whereas The Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions: From Ultramontane Origins to a New Cosmology has been described as a book that “offers a detailed examination of a specific congregation in a specific place (Canada), across a period of time (1898–2008), while also encapsulating the impact of global social, economic and political change in the late nineteenth centuries” and will surely serve as a model for researching and writing the history of women religious; and
Whereas she has published three books, co-authored two books, edited or co-edited six publications and numerous articles, and has presented at a number of conferences on the history of women religious; and
Whereas she has pioneered the use of micro-analysis as a means of addressing the why in the life of women religious, their institutes, and their ministries; and
Whereas she has established worldwide networks including the Theory and History of Education International Research Group that she has utilized to further study the impact of theology and pedagogy, with specific attention to the role of female religious congregations; and
Whereas she has utilized her multilingual skills to mine archives in Europe and in North, Central and South America to broaden the study of women religious; and
Whereas she has been honored with the 2018 G.E. Clerk Award by the Canadian Catholic Historical Association for her work in Catholic studies; and
Whereas her contributions to the Conference on the History of Women Religious and her work on Canadian religious congregations have been a service to the scholarly community worldwide; therefore
Be it resolved that the Conference on the History of Women Religious here assembled confers on Rosa Bruno-Jofré the Distinguished Historian Award. Given the twenty-eighth day of June in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-two at the conference “Dignity and Diversity Across Time and Place,” gathered at University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.
These award citations were presented at the Conference on the History of Women Religious in 2022.