Oral History Commons^™

A Conversation With Christopher Brown

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross Alum who graduated in 2004. Highlights of this conversation include content on the interviewee’s transition to the Holy Cross community, extracurricular involvements, spiritual life, and career in student services at St. Benedictine College in New York state.

Interview keywords: Allies, ABiGaLe, Office of Student Affairs

A Conversation With Mark Thivierge

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1970.

Interview keywords: social movements, 1960's, activism

A Conversation With Michael Mccarthy

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1973.

Interview keywords: theater, law, Fenwick Scholar, Vietnam War

A Conversation With Suzanne Lamoureux Kriesant

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1998. Highlights of this conversation include content on being bisexual at Holy Cross.

Interview keywords: ABiGale, bisexuality

A Conversation With George Grattan

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1991. Highlights of this conversation include George's reflections on the Holy Cross campus climate during the early 1990's, bisexuality, and the coming out process.

Interview keywords: closet, college, coming out, family, Jesuit, professional life, study abroad, support

A Conversation With Connelly Akstens

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1968. Highlights of this conversation include reflections on living as a closeted transgender person at Holy Cross in the 1960's and her transgender outreach efforts following her time at Holy Cross.

Interview keywords: activists, academics, basketball, closet, colleges, coming out, communities, compartmentalisation, Digital Transgender Archive, conferences, educators, free inquiry, intersex, Jesuit, musicians, provision of information, relationships, Roman Catholicism, sports, sportspersons, students, transgender community, transgender identity, transgender people, writers

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.

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 …

A Conversation With Anonymous (3)

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who attended in the early 2000s and came out during her senior year. She provided insights on her experiences as a queer woman on the Holy Cross campus and shared how her life has changed since leaving "the Holy Cross bubble."

Interview keywords: alum, ally, Catholic shame, college, identity, Iraq War, Jesuit, microaggressions, multicultural, oppression, post-college, social justice, queer/dyke

A Conversation With Joe Sasso

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1975. He discusses his experience of Holy Cross during the 70's and the lack of awareness the student body had for any type of gay identity. Additionally, he describes his experience coming out at age 45. In the interview, he reflects on how it would be or would not be different if he had been out on campus at this time and his recommendations on how Holy Cross can continue to support LGBTQ students.

Interview keywords: adulthood, alum, Catholic Church, college, cycling, family, friendship, gay …

A Conversation With Alisha Thompson

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 2014. Highlights of this interview include the interviewee's reflections of campus life as a closeted and out GLBTQ student as well as the sources of support she turned to throughout her four years.

Interview keywords: closet, college, coming out, family, Jesuit, professional life, study abroad, support

A Conversation With Anonymous (1)

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in the late 1980s. Conversation topics range from the cultural climate at HC to coming out to family and career.

Interview keywords: adoption, career, children, coming out, college, dating, first generation, friendships, identity, labeling, love, parenthood, partners, relationships, sexuality, social class, social norms

A Conversation With Tim Mooney

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1992. Highlights of this conversation include Tim's reflections on the Holy Cross campus climate during the early 1990's and the coming out process.

Interview keywords: academics, campus, coming out process, conservative, family, friendship, heteronormativity, Jesuit, LGBT, relationships, religion, stereotypes, Worcester

A Conversation With Carmine Salvucci

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1984. Along with sharing his reflections on his experiences at Holy Cross, Carmine offers personal reflection on family life, acceptance, and the relationship between LGBTQ identity, Jesuit ideals, and the Catholic Church.

Interview keywords: athletics, Catholicism, college culture, coming out, counseling, donations, families, first-generation students, gay men, identity, Jesuit, LGBTQ, masculinity, normalization, reflection, student life.

A Conversation With Jeff

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 2013. Jeff discusses their experiences at Holy Cross as an out student and as a student leader and activist.

Interview keywords: activist, battle fatigue, coming out, friendship, heterosexism, higher education, Jesuit, leadership, progress, relationships, residence life, student organizations, training

A Conversation With Anonymous (2)

LGBTQ Alumni Oral History Project

This conversation represents an oral history interview with a Holy Cross alum who graduated in 1987. This alum was not out at Holy Cross. He reflects on his time on and off the hill and on the state of LGBT legal protections today.

Interview keywords: activism, college, coming out, dating, friendship, gay men, HIV/AIDS, legal protections, marriage, media, politics, professors, social class, theatre, work, working class.