Education Commons^™

50 Years Of Title Ix And Women's Athletics At Holy Cross, Archives & Distinctive Collections, Lisa Villa

Exhibits

Two major events in 1972 brought major changes to the College of the Holy Cross: the passing of Title IX and the admission of women as students. This exhibit commmemorates the 50th anniversary of Title IX and continues the celebration of the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Holy Cross by highlighting the founding and growth of women’s athletics at the College.

Through Her Eyes: Learning And Teaching About Racism Through "To Kill A Mockingbird" And "The Bluest Eye", Sloane Larsen

English Honors Theses

This thesis argues that Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird both merit a place in te United States’ secondary education systems by using use them in the classroom to encourage students to recognize and challenge their biases, perspectives, and choices. One of the many complex questions this thesis addresses is the efficacy of teaching students about racism using such novels. Teaching these novels through Critical Race Theory could help create a new generation of students who are more likely to address and challenge their biases and privilege. At the same time, this approach requires …

You Have The Right To Remain Uneducated: The Role Of Lobbying In Subverting Anti-Racist Curricula, Liam Martin

Washington Semester Program

This research paper seeks to explore the relationship between professional political actors and the subject of racism in primary education curricula, specifically in areas with prominent anti-CRT movements. Synthesizing these ideas together, the fully formed research question guiding the development of this paper reads as follows: how does the lobbying industry impact the development of primary education curricula in the United States on the subjects of race and racism, specifically in reference to anti-CRT activism? The extant literature on topics of racism, the institution of lobbying, and primary education in America, led to the development of the following thesis …

Seeing Beneath The Surface: Using Critical Race Theory To Uncover Racial Inequities In The U.S. Public School System, Lauren Harkins

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

Many policies and practices perpetuate racial inequities and stereotypes, harming and neglecting the young people in American schools. This paper uses Critical Race Theory as a lens or framework to understand the circumstances in which educational inequities are exacerbated and what systemic barriers and beliefs maintain them.

Interviews In Global Catholic Studies: William T. Cavanaugh, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Mathew N. Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Global Catholicism, interviews William T. Cavanaugh, Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism & Intercultural Theology at DePaul University.

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Undergraduate Holocaust Education And Biomedical Ethics: What's The Connection?, Tatiana Thompson

Psychology Department Student Scholarship

This poster represents the research results of two studies used to examine Holocaust education in undergraduate colleges and universities.

Indians In The Archives: A History Of Native Americans, Pakachoag Hill And Holy Cross, 1674-1973, Jack Hynick

Of Life and History

Native people are conspicuously absent from the official and popular history of the College of the Holy Cross. Extant records from the Holy Cross archives, the American Antiquarian Society, and digitized reports from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are filled with references to Native people at Holy Cross and the surrounding Worcester area. By addressing the history of the land, the experiences of Native people on Pakachoag Hill, the roles played by Holy Cross community members in settler colonialism, and the use of Native imagery, this paper hopes to correct a blinding omission in the story of the College.

How Prison Systems Can Better Aid People With Substance Use Disorders, Avery Faires

College Honors Program

A large percentage of prisoners in the United States are suffering from a Substance Use Disorder (SUD), but many prisons across the country lack the proper resources to rehabilitate those with drug addictions. Incarcerated people with SUD face many dangerous and sometimes deadly consequences after release. My thesis addresses key associated questions: What role do prisons play in helping prisoners with SUD? And, how can they aid this population more effectively? When considering the breadth of such issues, I examine the sociohistorical context of drug policy in the U.S. to inform my analysis of the criminalization of substances, the greater …

Black Women Students In The Ivory Tower: A Case Study Of The College Of The Holy Cross, Meah S. Austin

Psychology Department Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Relations Textbooks And The Problem Of International Order, Stephen A. Kocs

Political Science Faculty Scholarship

The establishment and maintenance of order—that is, of settled rules and arrangements that regulate actors’ behavior—is central to politics at all levels, including the international level. Political order, after all, is a requisite for modern human existence. Given the priority of the problem of order, the most important questions that can be addressed in an introductory International Relations (IR) course are those that concern the sources, nature, and historical evolution of international order. But a survey of conventional introductory IR textbooks reveals that these questions are typically dealt with glancingly or ignored altogether. Thus a strong case can be made …

Campus Poetry Walk: (Re)Creating And Reconnecting A Community (Presentation), Lisa Villa

Staff publications

In January 2020, the Outreach and Engagement Team at the College of the Holy Cross began preparing a poetry walk, which was reconfigured to a social media “poetry event” due to COVID-19. With the anticipated return of students to campus for the Spring 2021 semester and a need for the community (especially students) to have recreational opportunities that were safe, socially distanced and preferably outside, the Team attempted for a second time to plan a poetry walk. CrossWorks, the institutional repository for the College, was a part of this plan from the beginning. Foremost, CrossWorks would support the scholarly and …

80th Anniversary Of The College Of The Holy Cross Naval Rotc Unit, Brendan J. O'Donnell

80th Anniversary of NROTC at Holy Cross

A summarized history of the Naval ROTC Unit at the College of the Holy Cross, presented at the O'Callahan Society Annual Dinner to commemmorate the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the unit.

History Of The Holy Cross Nrotc Unit: 80th Anniversary Slides, Brendan J. O'Donnell

80th Anniversary of NROTC at Holy Cross

Slides used to accompany a presentation of the history of the Naval ROTC Unit at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts given at the O'Callahan Society Annual Dinner on October 2, 2021.

Biomedical Ethics In The Medical School Curriculum: Lessons Learned From The Holocaust, Emma Flanagan

College Honors Program

The Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews, is the only medically-santioned genocide. This thesis explores the roles of Nazi doctors in the planning, organizing, and implementation of the organized mass murder of European Jewry. Given the German medical community’s complicity, it is imperative that physicians today are well informed about their profession’s history of involvement in the Holocaust. In addition, and by way of contrast, a study of the moral challenges faced by doctors imprisoned in concentration camps or in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe might serve to better prepare physicians for future ethical dilemmas. In a survey of …

Catholics & Cultures As An Act Of Improvisation: A Response, Thomas M. Landy

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay responds to seven articles published in the same issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism on the use of Catholics & Cultures, a multimedia website, as a pedagogical resource for college classrooms. The site is deliberately presented in a fashion that undermines notions of center and periphery and presents Catholicism from a lay, lived-religion perspective as the multicultural faith that it is, minimizing reference to religious typologies. Particular attention is given to how to navigate tensions around theorizing, categorizing and sorting information for cross-cultural comparison. Given scholars’ current state of knowledge, writing about and teaching about global Catholicism …

Catholics & Cultures: A Panoramic View In Search Of Greater Understanding, Stephanie M. Wong

Journal of Global Catholicism

While internet-based technologies can open up greater awareness of the world or create self-perpetuating echo-chambers, the Catholics & Cultures project aspires to do the former. Aiming to ‘widen the lens’ on the variety of Catholic communities and practices, the site delivers on this goal by introducing viewers to a vast array of articles, pictures and videos from around the world. The organization of the site by country and by certain key features of lived Catholicism offers some interpretive guidance. However, the project could be strengthened as a pedagogical resource if it were more extensively thematized and hosted reflections on potential …

The Value Of Online Resources: Reflections On Teaching An Introduction To Global Christianity, Hillary Kaell

Journal of Global Catholicism

Reflecting on my experience teaching Introduction to Global Christianity, this essay ponders questions at the heart of undergraduate teaching: How can we encourage students to utilize online sources? How can we empower them to seek out answers to their questions? It offers practical examples of how I have used the Catholics & Cultures website in my classroom at a large public university. In particular, I reflect on my experience working with students who are mostly of Catholic heritage, but from many cultural and social contexts.

Teaching Sexuality On The Catholics & Cultures Website: A Refreshing Turn Toward The Longue Durée, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

I present a close reading of the Catholics & Cultures (C&C) website’s treatment of sexuality-related issues and discuss this material in relation to debates about how to teach sexuality in religious studies and theology classrooms. The C&C website occasionally and intermittently uses a typical “contemporary issues” approach that considers sexuality in relation to legal and legislative decisions and government policies. In contrast, country profiles consistently situate sexuality in relation processes like nation building, urbanization, and lay Catholics’ growing authority. My interpretation highlights the site’s decision to emphasize the longue durée, long-term and deep structural processes driving cultural and religious changes. …

Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck

Journal of Global Catholicism

More than six decades after its publication, Horace Miner’s 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” remains a reliable pedagogical tool, remarkably successful in helping students see their own ethnocentric biases. Catholics & Cultures has potential to do similar work. The site lacks some of what makes Miner’s text so effective, in particular its capacity to bring about a sudden shift in perception. The site also shares some of the article’s limitations, particularly in focusing on ritual to the relative exclusion of other aspects of religion. That said, the site can help students gain the religious literacy and develop the …

Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder

Journal of Global Catholicism

The dynamics of religious resurgence reveal the important ways that religious ritual and performance are meaning making spaces which are not self-contained or cut off from the rest of culture, but rather are a key locus of cultural change. A renewed emphasis on the busy intersections of meaning making – as rituals are connected, disconnected, and reconnected to other domains of social life – would improve the utility of the Catholics & Cultures website for understanding global cultural change. And a renewed emphasis on cultural change would also provide a better means for exploring reflexively by seeking to understand both …

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Introducing Catholics & Cultures: Ethnography, Encyclopedia, Cyborg, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In introducing the Catholics & Cultures site and the articles in this special issue, this essay initially locates the overall Catholic & Cultures project within the traditions of ethnography and encyclopedia. Drawing extensively on the work of J. Z. Smith, this essay reflects upon the theoretical implications of emphasizing the diversity of Catholicism in and through a web-based platform that facilitates comparative study and pedagogy. This essay then more specifically considers the web-based aspects of Catholics & Cultures by identifying a nascent cyborgian aesthetic in the site and considering how the site might eventually engage post-modern themes and concerns.

Blackstone Communion, Anne-Catherine Schaaf

Office of Sustainability

This short story describes a spiritual connection with nature experienced by the author when walking along a trail in Blackstone Gateway Park. Blackstone Gateway Park is an urban, riverfront park in Worcester, Massachusetts. Features of the park include walking paths and an elevated boardwalk which crosses the Middle River and the surrounding wetlands.

See, Judge, Act: Restorative Justice And Catholic Social Teaching’S Impact On American Incarceration, Maxim Caron

Montserrat Annual Writing Prize

No abstract provided.

Wearing Policy: Uniform Foolishness In The Public School, Jeremy T. Murphy

Education Department Faculty Scholarship

In this personal account, the author recounts navigating a school uniform policy as a new teacher in a large public high school in Baltimore. He loosely situates this telling in the recent history of the public school uniform movement, of which Baltimore was central. Writing in an urgent present tense, the author details the many complexities posed by a rigid policy regulating students’ bodies. Unfolding over the course of a single school year, this article charts a system newcomer’s evolving understanding of the uniform policy, a school, and his students. The article additionally raises broader considerations about policy enforcement in …

Library Newsletter (Fall 2019), Holy Cross Libraries

Holy Cross Libraries Newsletters

Announcements and other items of interest related to the services offered by the libraries at the College of the Holy Cross. The newsletter features Montserrat Natural World Cluster collaboration between Professor Sarah Luria and Barabar Merolli, new staff in the College Archives, new database acquisitions, renovations and Authors on the Hill speaker Professor Melissa Schoenberger.

Library Newsletter (Spring 2019), Holy Cross Libraries

Holy Cross Libraries Newsletters

Announcements and other items of interest related to the services offered by the libraries at the College of the Holy Cross.

In, Out And About On The Hill: Lgbtqia+ Alums Reflect On Life At Holy Cross, 1978-2018, College Of The Holy Cross

Holy Cross Bookshelf

A new, expanded edition of reflective essays solicited by Prof. James B. Nickoloff from lesbian and gay alumni regarding their life at the College of the Holy Cross. The timeline begins in the late 1970s and extends to the late 2010s.

James B. Nickoloff, editor.

Contributing authors include:

Christopher Campbell

Carlito Espudo

Ellen J. Keohane

Lawrence Manfredi

Malcolm McCluskey

Rusmir Music

Nan O'Connor

Carmine Salvucci

Jeannie Seidler

Mairead M. Sullivan

Meghan T. Sweeney

The first edition was published in 2010.

The Undergraduate That Could: Crafting A Collaborative Student Training Program, Jennifer L.A. Whelan, Jared Andrew Rex

Staff publications

Since the mid-19th century, student worker programs have been an integral component of academic libraries, and the evolution of the profession has put more students, even undergraduates, into positions with greater responsibility, raising questions about the level of expertise of which undergraduate students are capable. The authors address these questions through the lens of the collaborative redevelopment of two distinct library student worker programs at a small liberal arts college. Included is a discussion of successes and challenges, as well as a consideration of the benefits of a “cross-library” support system in developing such a program.