American Catholic Studies Newsletter · Spring 2026
volume 53, number 1
From the director
As he prepares to take on a new leadership role in Notre Dame’s Department of History, Darren Dochuk reflects on the Cushwa Center’s commitment to fostering thoughtful conversation on religion, politics, and history—a commitment reflected especially in David Lantigua’s ongoing work with local communities, national media, and an upcoming international symposium.
Where is home? Devotion, solidarity, and pilgrimage at the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother
By Katherine Mascari. The life of Blessed Stanley Rother exemplifies Pope Francis’s turn to the peripheries, while also complicating the center-periphery relationship. Rother’s Oklahoma shrine has done the same.
A people’s faith: Irish pilgrimage during crisis
By Melissa Coles. As Ireland confronted the clerical abuse crisis in 2010, Melissa Coles’s research on Irish pilgrimage took on unexpected meaning and difficulty. In this photo essay, Coles revisits her journeys to Croagh Patrick, Inis Caher, and Knock—and the grief, faith, and hope she encountered in each place.
Preserving a theological voice: Notre Dame and partners open the Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, O.P., Collection
By Heather Grennan Gary. Through recordings, transcripts, and related materials from Gustavo Gutiérrez’s long-running theological gatherings in Peru, a new collection offers a vivid window into liberation theology as a lived, spoken, communal practice.
In review: Fall 2025 at Cushwa
Michael Skaggs revisits Hasia Diner’s Hibernian Lecture, the Dolan Seminar with Thomas Tweed, and the annual Cushwa Center Lecture offered by Robert Ellsberg.
In memoriam: Gabriella Ferruggia Codignola, 1948–2026
The Cushwa Center and friends mourn the passing of Gabriella Ferruggia Codignola, a cherished colleague and scholar of American literature, remembered for her intellect, wit, and generosity.
Friends of Cushwa news and notes
Read updates from the Cushwa Center’s network.
Grant and award recipients announced
A record 39 researchers are receiving support from the Cushwa Center in 2026 for a variety of projects.
Sisters of the Holy Cross and partners to open new research center
Barbara Gordon, Jennifer Head, and JA Pryse introduce the Heritage and Research Center at Saint Mary’s, a new collaborative archive preserving the histories of ten congregations of Catholic sisters and their sponsored ministries.
Vital tradition: A review of Edward Wright-Ríos’s Devotion in Motion
By Sadie Yates. In Devotion in Motion: Pilgrimage in Modern Mexico (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Edward Wright-Ríos invites readers into the “disorienting, unrelenting, and unforgettable ordeal” that is contemporary pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Juquila in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Recent publications of interest
Browse this issue’s survey of recent books and articles in American Catholic studies, history and sociology of religion, theology, and related fields.