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Rev. Stephen Badin The University of Notre Dame has acquired a Bible once owned by Rev. Stephen Badin, the pioneer priest on whose mission grounds Notre Dame’s founder, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., began to build the University 172 years ago. Father Badin’s Bible was purchased from the Sisters of Loretto of Nerinx, Kentucky, and a delegation of sisters is coming to Notre Dame on Monday (July 14) to deliver it by hand during a Mass that will be celebrated in the Log Chapel where Father Badin is buried.…

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The Cushwa Center is pleased to announce the recipients of the Center's annual Research Travel Grants, the Hibernian Award, and the Peter R. D'Agostino Research Travel Grant.   .

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University of Notre Dame, London Centre 7-9 May 2015 Call for Papers: The Nun in the World (pdf) This symposium aims to unite three burgeoning areas of scholarship in religious history: the examination of the “lived history” of the Second Vatican Council; an analysis of the Roman Catholic Church as a transnational actor in global history; and efforts to develop a comprehensive understanding of Catholic women’s religious institutes through the lens of the history of gender and voluntarism during one of the most transformative moments in their collective history. At the Council, religious communities were urged to seek renewal by examining the original charisms of their founders and by subjecting their life and ministry to prayerful scrutiny. This search for renewal prompted most communities to implement a variety of structural changes and to reconceptualize their mission within a church now open and receptive to “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties” of the age.…

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Geneviève Piché is a graduate student at the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada. She’s currently in the process of writing her dissertation, When Two Worlds Meet: Louisianans’ Slaves and the Catholic Church, 1803-1842. Piché received a Cushwa Center Research Travel Grant in 2013, and recently spoke with us about her research.

Read More about Meet Research Travel Grant recipient Geneviève Piché

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism has organized an international multiyear examination of the council’s impact around the world. The center recruited 15 scholars to do research on individual dioceses—five in the United States and 10 in other countries—and write essays on their findings. Notre Dame will host a conference of those scholars and others in the spring, and a book will be published the following year, 50 years after the closing of the council.…

Read More about Upcoming Cushwa Center conference to examine lived history of Vatican II around the globe

Notre Dame International (NDI) has awarded a $20,000 grant to Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center and associate professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, for her project, “From Daughters of the Church to Citizens of the World: A Transnational Study of Catholic Sisters and the Second Vatican Council.” A team of 15 scholars will participate in the project, which will culminate in a symposium at Notre Dame’s Global Gateway in London in late spring 2015.…

Read More about Cushwa Center director receives Global Collaboration Initiative Grant for Catholic sisters and Vatican II project

Candice Shy Hooper Candice Shy Hooper is an independent scholar working on a book project titled Lincoln & His Generals’ Wives: How Four Women Influenced the Course of the Civil War—for Better and for Worse. She is a 2013 Research Travel Grant…

Read More about Five questions for Research Travel Grant recipient Candice Shy Hooper

Michelle Granshaw is in her first year on the theatre arts faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. She is one of two recipients of the Hibernian Research Award this year, and she recently explained to us what the hibernicon is and gave us an update on her book project.…

Read More about Five questions for Hibernian Research Award recipient Michelle Granshaw

The October 28 special issue of America, the Jesuit weekly magazine, highlights women in the life of the church. The principal contributors to this issue, all women, examine topics such as ministry, spirituality, social justice, and work-life balance. Cushwa Center director Kathleen Sprows Cummings contributed the essay “A Promising Path,”…

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It was a full house in the Andrews Auditorium of Geddes Hall on Monday night to hear John Allen Jr., Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), speak on the international Catholic Church and its impact on American Catholics.

Read More about Vatican analyst John Allen shares reporting experience at Cushwa Center Lecture

Una Cadegan, associate professor of history at the University of Dayton, is the author of All Good Books Are Catholic Books: Print Culture, Censorship, and Modernity in Twentieth-Century America (Cornell University Press).

Read More about Interview with Una Cadegan, author of most recent volume in the Cushwa Center's book series

Henry Maar, a PhD candidate in history at the University of California Santa Barbara, is one of the Cushwa Center’s research travel grant recipients for 2013. We caught up with him earlier this summer during his week at the Notre Dame Archives.

Read More about Five questions for research travel grant recipient Henry Maar

William S. Cossen is a PhD candidate in history at Penn State and a recipient of the 2013 Cushwa Center research travel grant. He spoke with us about his research in August, while he was visiting the University of Notre Dame Archives.

Read More about Research travel grant recipient William S. Cossen on "the Protestant other"

The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism in conjunction with Northwestern University invites paper proposals for an international conference on the Lived History of Vatican II to be convened at the University of Notre Dame April 24-27, 2014. We seek scholars and advanced graduate students who will present close-grained local histories of the immediate Council era and its aftermath in a particular diocese or geographic region. Preference will be given to proposals that focus on how the attempt to implement Vatican II interacted with a specific local context to shape the development of a key element of Catholic life such as worship, ecumenical relations, religious or family life, or social activism in a given locale. …

Read More about CFP: Lived History of Vatican II Conference, April 24-27, 2014

A new book by Mary Ellen Konieczny, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame [and former Cushwa Center fellow], examines how religion and family life are intertwined and how local parishes shape that intersection.

Read More about New book explores how Catholic parishes contribute to polarization

Charlotte Hansen, PhD, is a Cushwa Fellow for six weeks this spring. Hansen, an administrator and researcher at the George Bell Institute at the University of Chichester in Sussex (UK), is also an affiliated lecturer with the university’s Department of History…

Read More about Five questions for Cushwa Fellow Charlotte Hansen

Recently the Hesburgh Libraries received a doubly holy gift: a book about saints presented by St. André Bessette, CSC, to a friend more than a century ago. The book, Legende von den lieben Heiligen Gottes…

Read More about Gift to Hesburgh Library has ties to Holy Cross saint

The Cushwa Center is pleased to announce the 2013 research travel grant awards:

Read More about Cushwa Center announces 2013 research travel grant recipients

"Pope Benedict’s announcement should not come as too much of a surprise," said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, associate professor of American Studies and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. "He himself said on a on a number of occasions that the pope has the right—and perhaps even the obligation—to resign should he feel unable to carry out the duties of his office."

Read More about Papal resignation: A lesson in "how and when to make a courageous exit"

Catherine Osborne, Ph.D. candidate in theology at Fordham University, joined the Cushwa Center in January as a fellow.

Read More about Five questions for Cushwa Fellow Catherine Osborne