History Commons^™

Relics, Processions And The Sounding Of Affections: Barbara Strozzi, The Archduchess Of Innsbruck, And Saint Anthony Of Padua, Sara M. Pecknold

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1655, Barbara Strozzi issued her fifth and only sacred opus, the Sacri musicali affetti, a print comprising fourteen passionately religious motets for solo voice and continuo. This article demonstrates how Strozzi's final motet to Saint Anthony reflects a surge in trans-Alpine Antonine devotion--a devotional trend in which both Strozzi's dedicatee, Anna de' Medici, and possibly the composer herself, participated. This essay examines two particular events: a procession of Saint Anthony’s relics from Venice to Padua in 1652, and the founding of a Antonine confraternity at the court of Innsbruck in the same year. When these phenomena are examined …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

Authority, Representation, And Offense: Dalit Catholics, Foot Washing, And The Study Of Global Catholicism, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In reflecting on a sharp scholarly exchange at a conference, this article explores issues of authority, representation, and offense in global Catholic and South Asian Studies. Focusing on the act of foot washing by Dalit Catholics, the article examines how scholarly offense is linked to particular claims of representational authority. The article also puts this discussion within the context of contemporary debates about Western portrayals of Indian culture and society.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …

I Dreamed In Terms Of Novels: Dorothy Day And The Ethics Of Nineteenth-Century Literature, Katherine Thomsen Pierson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

To the extent that she is known, Dorothy Day, a twentieth-century American Catholic journalist and social reformer currently under consideration for sainthood by the Vatican, is recognized for her religious influences. Pope Francis, in his 2015 speech before the American Congress, said she was inspired by “the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.” Yet throughout her life Day was a consistent reader of secular texts and even said she “lived by” the vision of some of her favorite writers. This thesis examines Day’s secular influences—in particular Dickens’s David Copperfield and Little Dorrit—and begins to trace their …

Unconfessing Transgender: Dysphoric Youths And The Medicalization Of Madness In John Gower’S “Tale Of Iphis And Ianthe”, M W. Bychowski

Accessus

On the brink of the twenty-first century, Judith Butler argues in “Undiagnosing Gender” that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines the psychiatric condition of “Gender Identity Disorder” (or “Gender Dysphoria”) in ways that control biological diversity and construct “transgender” as a marginalized identity. By turning the study of gender away from vulnerable individuals and towards the broader systems of power, Butler works to liberate bodies from the medical mechanisms managing difference and precluding potentially disruptive innovations in forms of life and embodiment by creating categories of gender and disability.

Turning to the brink of the 15 …

“Fixing The Italian Problem”: Archbishop Of New Orleans John W. Shaw And The Oblates Of Mary Immaculate, 1918-1933, Emily E. Nuttli

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In 1918, Archbishop Shaw invited the Texas Catholic religious order, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to New Orleans to manage the St. Louis Cathedral and its filial parish for Southern Italians, St. Mary’s Church. This thesis will look at the personalities and preferentialism that affected this early 20^th century transfer of religious power from secular priests to a religious order. Comparing the language used by Archbishop Shaw in correspondence with Oblate Fathers with the language he used with his secular priests will determine that Shaw displayed favoritism in his decision to invite the Oblates. This decision was affected by …

La Censura Católica Literaria Durante La Posguerra Española: Traspasando Las Fronteras De La Ideología Franquista., Ángela Pérez Del Puerto

Doctoral Dissertations

My research studies the literary censorship carried out by the Catholic Action Association through the Secretary of Bibliographic Orientation (SBO) in Spain during the 1940s. This secular institution paralleled, and in certain moments questioned, some Francoist values by judging and banning publications that had previously passed the official censorship. In particular, the censorship of the SBO focused, on the one hand, on Modernist Spanish authors who were accused of preaching strong anti-religious ideas and, on the other hand, on new texts published in that period that failed to reproduce the Catholic discourse. Through the analysis of this censorship activity, my …

"Puritan Hypocrisy" And "Conservative Catholicity" : How Roman Catholic Clergy In The Border States Interpreted The U.S. Civil War., Carl C. Creason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how Roman Catholic clergy in the Border States—Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland—interpreted the United States Civil War. Overall, it argues that prelates and priests from the region viewed the war through a religious lens informed by their Catholic worldview. Influenced by their experiences with anti-Catholicism and nativism as well as the arguments of the Catholic apologist movement, the clergy interpreted the war as a product of the ill-effects of Protestantism in the country. In response, the clergy argued that if more Americans had practiced Catholicism then the war could and would have been avoided. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates …

Constructing Marianismo In Colonial Mexico, Kathryn A. Buchanan

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Migration In Slavic Village, The History Behind The Cleveland Central Catholic Ironmen., Mary C. Brondfield Mrs., Matt Aber Mr.

Migration in Global Context Symposium

This presentation is a collaborative effort by two educators from the disciplines of art and history. The PowerPoint presentation documents the the cross curricular migration themed event that explored migration in Slavic Village, Ohio. Historical speakers and visits to historical sites engaged students throughout the event. Through oral history and the visual arts students engaged in project based learning.

Beyond The Dusty World: Daoism And The Epistolary Dialectics Of Thomas Merton And John Wu, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

In 1961, two great thinkers and spiritual masters inaugurated an epistolary exchange that transpired into a rich dialectic between East and West. Professor John H. Wu (Wu Jingxiong 吳經熊 1899-1986) and Father Thomas Louis Merton, OCSO, (1915-1968) largely centered their interchange upon the topic of the Dao 道, or “Way,” as it was articulated in the Daoist tradition in China’s Zhou (1045-221 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) eras. With due respect to the abiding intellects and spiritual insight of these two interlocutors, this paper considers the possible disparities between what Wu and Merton understood to be the “Dao” of …

From Holy To Hunted: The Early Modern Witch Trials As A Catholic Response To Female Mysticism, Gaia Cloutier

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Long Journeys To A Middle Ground: Indians, Catholics, And The Origins Of A New Deal In Montana And Idaho, 1855-1945, Aaron David Hyams

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study focuses on the experiences of individuals and families, on the Blackfeet, Flathead, and Nez Perce reservations of Montana and Idaho, who converted to Catholicism, adapted to agricultural living, accepted American education, and otherwise sought to find their places in a rapidly changing world. At the same time, this project follows local Catholic leaders from the missions and surrounding parishes who struggled with their contradictory roles as shepherds of their native flocks and agents of colonialism. I argue that Indians and Catholics on the reservations carved out often overlapping communities and identities as they negotiated the changes introduced by …

The Catholic Enlightenment. The Forgotten History Of A Global Movement, Ulrich Lehner

Ulrich L. Lehner

No abstract provided.