2025 CHWR award citations
Tim Allender, Distinguished Book Award
Whereas Empire religiosity: Convent habits in colonial and postcolonial India (Manchester University Press, 2024) has been described as telling “a compelling story, beautifully written, conveyed with clarity and compassion”1 about the work and influence of Loreto sisters in Calcutta and beyond; and
Whereas Empire religiosity uncovers a 180-year history that includes the struggle of Irish women religious in and after British Protestant colonial rule; and
Whereas Empire religiosity weaves together a wide range of sources—diaries and journals, photographs and school magazines, interviews with women religious and past students of Loreto sisters—to enrich and localize a complex story; and
Whereas Empire religiosity chronicles the long process by which a small community of women religious have had outsized influence on the social and cultural landscape in North-East India, which equally in turn has changed their charism; and
Whereas Empire religiosity portrays the Loreto sisters’ ambivalent negotiations of race, empire, religion, class, and gender, as well as their singular connections to the Indian girls and young women they have served; therefore
Be it resolved that the Conference on the History of Women Religious here assembled confers on Tim Allender the Distinguished Book Award. Given the twenty-fourth day of June in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, at the conference, “Lives and Archives,” gathered at the University of Notre Dame.
Deirdre Raftery, Distinguished Book Award
Whereas Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World: A Transnational History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) has been described as an important transnational history of nuns which draws attention to the remarkable, global growth of orders of Irish women religious and their missionary activity in the 19th century; and
Whereas Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World is meticulously researched, using an exceptionally large range of sources drawn from archives in Australia, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and
Whereas Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World vividly narrates the arduous journeys, calls to mission and to leadership, colonial entanglements, and Irish transnational networks and identity that characterize the life and work of these women; and
Whereas Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World is a scholarly work of great breadth and depth, uncovering a history too often left hidden in convent archives, and written in clear, elegant prose that gives voice to women religious themselves, whose letters are generously quoted throughout; therefore
Be it resolved that the Conference on the History of Women Religious here assembled confers on Deirdre Raftery the Distinguished Book Award. Given the twenty-fourth day of June in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, at the conference, “Lives and Archives,” gathered at the University of Notre Dame.
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Distinguished Scholar Award
Whereas her monographs New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) each place women religious at the center of broader narratives in U.S. Catholic history; and
Whereas she has provided her students new ways to think about sanctity as well as the organizational structures, practices, rituals, and sociological and anthropological dynamics of a Catholic worldview; and
Whereas in addition to many published articles, essays, and reviews, she has lectured in Argentina, Ireland, Italy, and throughout the United States on various aspects of the history of sisters and nuns; and
Whereas she served as coordinator of the Conference on the History of Women Religious from 2013 to 2023, ensuring the success of its triennial meetings and institutional support at the University of Notre Dame; and
Whereas outside of CHWR meetings she has convened additional seminars and conferences for scholars of women religious in Galway, London, Rome, and at Notre Dame; therefore
Be it resolved that the Conference on the History of Women Religious here assembled confers on Kathleen Sprows Cummings the Distinguished Scholar Award. Given the twenty-fourth day of June in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, at the conference, “Lives and Archives,” gathered at the University of Notre Dame.
Sister Dolores Liptak, R.S.M., Lifetime Achievement Award
Whereas Sister Dolores Liptak is a Sister of Mercy of the Americas who has dedicated her life to teaching, research, writing, editing, and archival preservation; and
Whereas she is counted among the trailblazing historians of women religious of the 1970s and 1980s, having completed her doctorate in American history in 1979 at the University of Connecticut; and
Whereas she is the author of Immigrants and Their Church (Macmillan, 1989), co-editor of Pioneer Healers: The History of Women Religious in American Health Care (Crossroad, 1989), and author or editor of numerous scholarly articles pertaining to the history of U.S. Catholic sisters; and
Whereas she has been a lifelong devoted educator from elementary to graduate school, championing history as a form of inductive theology and forming her students for participation in American and American Catholic life; and
Whereas she was an early advocate of the professional organizing of convent archives and initiated numerous local preservation projects, including for the Connecticut region of her own community, for the Carmelite Monastery of Baltimore, and for the Monastery of the Visitation, Georgetown; and
Whereas she contributed to the establishment and early success of Archivists for Congregations of Women Religious, serving as the organization’s inaugural president and completing three presidential terms during its first decade; and
Whereas she has long contributed to the Conference on the History of Women Religious itself, presenting research or facilitating sessions at eight of its first nine triennial meetings; and
Whereas she has provided transformative mentorship to scholars and archivists alike, both religious and lay; therefore
Be it resolved that the Conference on the History of Women Religious here assembled confers on Dolores Liptak, R.S.M., the Lifetime Achievement Award. Given the twenty-fourth day of June in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-five, at the conference, “Lives and Archives,” gathered at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.
1. Ellis, Catriona. 2025. “Empire Religiosity: Convent Habits in Colonial and Postcolonial India: By Tim Allender, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2024, 304 pp., ISBN 978-1-5261-5910-6.” History of Education, May, 1–3. doi:10.1080/0046760X.2025.2494020.