Superpower Saints: Rome and America, 1939-1963
Kathleen Sprows Cummings
University of Notre Dame
Date: October 11, 2018
Co-sponsored with the Catholic Studies Program
Abstract
During and after the Second World War, Elizabeth Ann Seton, then a candidate for canonization, was increasingly touted as a "wholly American saint." This lecture will look at how America's status as a Cold War superpower merged with Catholic Americanism to influence the making of saints in the 20th century.
Speaker Bio
Kathleen Sprows Cummings is the William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. She is also an associate professor of American studies and history at Notre Dame. Cummings is the author of several books, including New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholic Identity in the Progressive Era (University of North Carolina Press) which was the winner of three 2009 Catholic Press Association Awards. Research for her current book project, entitled Citizen Saints: Catholics and Canonization in American Culture, was funded by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. Cummings graduated summa cum laude from the University of Scranton with a B.A. She received her M.A. in History from the University of Scranton, her M.A. in History and her Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Notre Dame.