Carmen M. Mangion | Birkbeck College, University of London (original) (raw)
Books by Carmen M. Mangion
This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival material... more This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival materials and a remarkable set of eighty interviews to place Catholic sisters and nuns at the heart of the turbulent 1960s, integrating their story of social change into a larger British and international one. Shedding new light on how religious bodies engaged in modernisation, it addresses themes such as the Modern Girl and youth culture, '1968', generational discourse, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women's movement. Women religious were at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Church's movement of adaptation and renewal towards the world. This volume tells their stories in their own words.
Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life of exile in the... more Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life of exile in the convents of France, Flanders, Portugal and America. These closed communities offered religious contemplation and safety, but also provided an environment of concentrated female intellectualism. The nuns' writings from this time form a unique resource, documenting daily domestic and devotional pursuits, as well as issues of wider interest, such as record keeping, finance, national identity, transatlantic connections and the nature of exile.
The majority of the documents in this six volume collection are extremely rare and previously unpublished. Each volume is given over to a particular theme: history, spirituality, life writing, management and the outside world. Documents have been chosen to cover a range of monastic orders and are contextualized by headnotes, endnotes and volume introductions as well as by a full, overarching general introduction. The collection brings to light over a hundred testimonies previously unavailable to scholars and will be a key resource for those researching social and religious history or women's intellectual history of this period.
The French Revolution and the End of Exile: Rouen Chronicles, Poor Clares, Vol III: 1791–1800; Paris Diurnal, Augustinians, Vol 2: 1793–1801; Colwich MS, Benedictines of Paris (1766–99), recounts the experience of the Benedictines of Paris during the French Revolution; Conyers letters, Poor Clares of Aire (1788–1829); Extracts from correspondence: English Benedictines (1760–94) [extracts]; Legal documents: English Benedictines (Champs d’Allouettes), Conceptionists (known as the Blue Nuns, Faubourg St Antoine), Augustinians (Fossée St Victor) (1786–93) [extracts]; Cowdray: Description of journey to England (1794–1804); Account of Austin nuns, Bruges to England (1794)
This timely collection of essays on British and European Catholic spiritualities explores how ide... more This timely collection of essays on British and European Catholic spiritualities explores how ideas of the sacred have influenced female relationships with piety and religious vocations over time. Each of the studies focuses on specific persons or groups within the varied contexts of England, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, together spanning the medieval period through to the nineteenth century.
Examining the interplay between women's religious roles and patriarchal norms, the volume highlights the relevance of gender and spirituality through a wide geographical and chronological spectrum. It is an essential resource for students of Gender History, Women's Studies and Religious Studies, introducing a wealth of new research and providing an approachable guide to current debates and methodologies.
Contributions by: Nancy Jiwon Cho, Frances E. Dolan, Rina Lahav, Jenna Lay, Laurence Lux-Sterritt, Carmen M. Mangion, Querciolo Mazzonis, Marit Monteiro, Elizabeth Rhodes, Kate Stogdon, Anna Welch
English Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. ... more English Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand nuns and sisters, establishing and managing significant Catholic educational, health care and social welfare institutions in England and Wales, have virtually disappeared from history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in the public and private sphere. Intertwining the complexities of class with the notion of ethnicity, Contested identities examines the relationship between English and Irish-born sisters.
Edited Journals by Carmen M. Mangion
Journal articles by Carmen M. Mangion
Medical History, 2018
This article interrogates the complicated understanding of sectarianism in institutional cultures... more This article interrogates the complicated understanding of sectarianism in institutional cultures in late-nineteenth-century England through an examination of the practice of religion in the daily life of hospital wards in voluntary hospitals. Voluntary hospitals prided themselves on their identity as philanthropic institutions free from sectarian practices. The public accusation of sectarianism against University College Hospital triggered a series of responses that suggests that hospital practices reflected and reinforced an acceptable degree of ‘tolerable intolerance’. The debates this incident prompted help us to interrogate the meaning of sectarianism in late nineteenth-century England. How was sectarianism understood? Why was it so important for voluntary institutions to appear free from sectarian influences? How did the responses to claims of sectarian attitudes influence the actions of the male governors, administrators and medical staff of voluntary hospitals? The contradictory meanings of sectarianism are examined in three interrelated themes: the patient, daily life on the wards and hospital funding. The broader debates that arose from the threat of ‘sectarianism in hospital’ uncovers the extent to which religious practices were ingrained in hospital spaces throughout England and remained so long afterwards. Despite the increasing medicalization and secularisation of hospital spaces, religious practices and symbols were embedded in the daily life of voluntary hospitals.
This study of St Scholastica's Retreat offers an opportunity to examine a charity for the middle ... more This study of St Scholastica's Retreat offers an opportunity to examine a charity for the middle classes and the horizontal relationship between middle-class benefactors and recipients that did not appear to stigmatise middle-class recipients of charity. Middle-class inhabitants accessed a mix of resources, from personal resources, kinship relationships, friendship and charitable networks, as part of a ‘mixed economy of welfare’ so often discussed by welfare historians in Britain. Their ‘choices’ were limited but their personal networks enabled them to maintain their middle-class identities. This research not also demonstrates the flexibility of almshouse accommodation but also the meanings inherent in the domestic space that emphasised middle-class respectability.
19. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century , 2012
The history of pain, approached through phenomenology and the various rhetorics of pain can bring... more The history of pain, approached through phenomenology and the various rhetorics of pain can bring into sharp relief how pain is culturally derived and embedded in a society’s values and norms. This essay explores nineteenth-century Catholic interpretations of pain, utilizing biography to examine how and why corporeal pain functioned as a means of both reinforcing Catholic beliefs in the utility of pain and of coping with pain. It examines unwanted pain in a defined space, the convent, and through a particular source, the biography of Margaret Hallahan (1803–1868), founder of the Dominican Sisters of St Catherine of Siena, written by the future prioress, convert Augusta Theodosia Drane (1823–1894) in 1869. Pain contributed to Hallahan’s identity: her corporeal suffering and its meanings, which were religious, cultural, and political, were embedded in her life story. Pain, as an ‘unpleasant sensory and emotional experience’, is treated in this essay as a subjective event given its meanings by both Hallahan and her biographer. If we look at the performance of pain through this lens of subjectivity, examining the tenor of the emotional experiences derived from Hallahan’s bodily pain, relationships, especially those with her religious sisters, spectators of her pain-full illness, come into high relief pointing to the relevance of community and the place of the convent. This approach lays out Hallahan’s life, as interpreted by Drane but refracted within the life of the religious community, to develop the interplay between these three actors: Hallahan, Drane, and the Dominican sisters. The rhetorics of pain in Hallahan’s life story will unfold through three themes: the hiddenness of pain, the relevance of imitatio Christi, and the issue of consolation. Hallahan’s painful illness was used to affirm her sanctity but also to remind Catholics of the responsibilities and utility of bodily pain. Pain, though represented as private and hidden, became public property with the publication of the Life and became an epistemological tool used to define, reproduce, and reify Catholic ideals of living with pain-filled unwanted somatic suffering.
Women's History Review, 2012
This essay examines, using Foucault's concept of heterotopias and the Foucauldian notion of surve... more This essay examines, using Foucault's concept of heterotopias and the Foucauldian notion of surveillance, the Catholic sickroom as a sacred space, created and managed by women religious, where women could be mediators of the sacred. It considers how women religious shaped the meanings of the sickroom using a salvific spiritual message found in the directives, actions and bodies of the sister-nurse. By examining the Catholic sickroom as a crisis heterotopia, the multiplicity of meanings which were present in this ‘real place’ emerges. Catholic women religious in England provided alternate sites of medical treatment for Catholics where the medical and the sacred could co-exist. They entered into social relationships through a cultural discourse that structured their work as ‘caring’, yet they also took the opportunity to mould the religious practices and behaviour of patients within these spaces. The heterotopian place of the Catholic sickroom exposed the ‘real space’ where women ministered in all but sacramental ways to the spiritual needs of patients. This study positions women religious as key protagonists in the development of the sacredness of the sickroom as a social space thereby expanding the spheres of influence of women. The Catholic sickroom, both in the institution and in the home, provided an alternate social space where the politics of religion, theology, and gender added to the complex meanings of the sickroom.
History of Education, 2012
Much of the debates in late nineteenth-century Britain regarding the education of deaf children r... more Much of the debates in late nineteenth-century Britain regarding the education of deaf children revolved around communication. For many Victorians, sign language was unacceptable; many proponents of oralism attempted to ‘normalise’ the hearing impaired by replacing deaf methods of communication with spoken language and lipreading. While debates on language were raging in late nineteenth-century England, another facet of normalisation, that of occupational training, was being developed at St John’s Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the only Catholic deaf school in England. This school not only functioned to develop the Catholic faith of the deaf, but also expected to improve the social and economic status of deaf Catholics. Elementary education, and particularly occupational training, was meant to transform the deaf child into a faith-filled, respectable, working-class citizen. This essay aims at moving the normalisation debates away from language skills and towards this alternative mode of integration.
European Review of History, 2012
In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the... more In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the aged poor as social investigators sought to explain their dependency and poverty. Elderly men and women who were unable to care for themselves, and without a family or community to attend to their needs, had few alternatives outside the workhouse in nineteenth-century England and Wales. Catholic homes for the elderly managed by communities of women religious such as the Sisters of Nazareth provided an important option to the aged poor who often needed both accommodation and medical care. These homes provided a unique form of social welfare which attracted the attention of Protestants as well as Catholics as benefactors. Protestant reformers, looking for different approaches to maintaining the aged poor, inspected these Catholic homes in order to develop their own institutional solutions. Perhaps more pointedly, this interaction between Protestants and Catholics offers a counter narrative to the usual histories that emphasise anti-Catholicism, sectarianism and conflict. Despite the anti-Catholic tenor of the times, the homes for the aged of the Sisters of Nazareth were recognized and funded by both Catholics and Protestants as they were seen as providing a much needed form of charitable aid for the aged poor. As an alternative to poor law workhouses, the institutions created and managed by Catholic women religious formed an integral part of the mixed economy of welfare in the nineteenth century.
Women's History Review, Jan 1, 2007
The two formal stages of training, the postulancy and the novitiate, prepared women for the spiri... more The two formal stages of training, the postulancy and the novitiate, prepared women for the spiritual, vocational and communal aspects of religious life. Novitiate training in church history, doctrine and theology as well as her formal vocational training indicated that the novice was meant to be an educated and effective evangeliser of her faith. Ritual was an important part of convent life, especially as women moved from lay to religious life. Ceremonies, processions and devotions were rich in symbolism and emphasised the sacredness of the life being entered into. It was through the successful negotiation of the postulancy and novitiate that Catholic women religious demonstrated their power, although paradoxically it was obedience and docility that formed the basis of this power.
Women's History Review, Jan 1, 2005
Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten... more Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand women involved in these congregations have been rendered invisible in history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in negotiating the boundaries of religious life, sometimes to their collective benefit, sometimes not. Prescriptive literature gave one model of womanhood, married life, with a second model, single life, clearly an inauspicious alternative. Women religious provided a different model and created a religious, occupational and professional identity that varied from the prescriptive literature of the day. Their religious identity had as its goal their own ‘perfection’ and the salvation of others. Their occupational identity as ‘nun’ often encompassed a wide variety of tasks, but by the end of the century, the professional identity of nun as teacher or nurse was firmly in place.
Chapters by Carmen M. Mangion
Although deaconess life had its place in England from 1861, its growth in terms of numbers of dea... more Although deaconess life had its place in England from 1861, its growth in terms of numbers of deaconesses was not substantial. The role of the deaconess, though attractive to many religious women and men, was constrained by its perceived similarity to community-centred religious life (that of both Anglican and Roman Catholic nuns and sisters). Links with Kaiserswerth were important to the early beginning of many deaconess communities, but the need to distance the movement from ‘foreign’ elements echoed the cultural undercurrents which limited its growth and influence. Deaconess nursing was an important early means of ministerial outreach but its institutional form waned in some quarters by the end of the nineteenth century. The marginalisation of deaconess nursing, particularly in its institutional forms – the core concern of this article – was a result of the interplay between the religious mission of deaconesses and the developing sophistication of the medical marketplace.
in The Economics of Providence: Management, Finances and Patrimony of Religious Orders and Congregations in Europe 1773 to ca. 1930 edited by Maarten Van Dijck, Jan de Maeyer, Jeffrey Tyssens and Jimmy Koppen (Leuven University Press, 2013)., 2013
This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival material... more This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival materials and a remarkable set of eighty interviews to place Catholic sisters and nuns at the heart of the turbulent 1960s, integrating their story of social change into a larger British and international one. Shedding new light on how religious bodies engaged in modernisation, it addresses themes such as the Modern Girl and youth culture, '1968', generational discourse, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women's movement. Women religious were at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Church's movement of adaptation and renewal towards the world. This volume tells their stories in their own words.
Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life of exile in the... more Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life of exile in the convents of France, Flanders, Portugal and America. These closed communities offered religious contemplation and safety, but also provided an environment of concentrated female intellectualism. The nuns' writings from this time form a unique resource, documenting daily domestic and devotional pursuits, as well as issues of wider interest, such as record keeping, finance, national identity, transatlantic connections and the nature of exile.
The majority of the documents in this six volume collection are extremely rare and previously unpublished. Each volume is given over to a particular theme: history, spirituality, life writing, management and the outside world. Documents have been chosen to cover a range of monastic orders and are contextualized by headnotes, endnotes and volume introductions as well as by a full, overarching general introduction. The collection brings to light over a hundred testimonies previously unavailable to scholars and will be a key resource for those researching social and religious history or women's intellectual history of this period.
The French Revolution and the End of Exile: Rouen Chronicles, Poor Clares, Vol III: 1791–1800; Paris Diurnal, Augustinians, Vol 2: 1793–1801; Colwich MS, Benedictines of Paris (1766–99), recounts the experience of the Benedictines of Paris during the French Revolution; Conyers letters, Poor Clares of Aire (1788–1829); Extracts from correspondence: English Benedictines (1760–94) [extracts]; Legal documents: English Benedictines (Champs d’Allouettes), Conceptionists (known as the Blue Nuns, Faubourg St Antoine), Augustinians (Fossée St Victor) (1786–93) [extracts]; Cowdray: Description of journey to England (1794–1804); Account of Austin nuns, Bruges to England (1794)
This timely collection of essays on British and European Catholic spiritualities explores how ide... more This timely collection of essays on British and European Catholic spiritualities explores how ideas of the sacred have influenced female relationships with piety and religious vocations over time. Each of the studies focuses on specific persons or groups within the varied contexts of England, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, together spanning the medieval period through to the nineteenth century.
Examining the interplay between women's religious roles and patriarchal norms, the volume highlights the relevance of gender and spirituality through a wide geographical and chronological spectrum. It is an essential resource for students of Gender History, Women's Studies and Religious Studies, introducing a wealth of new research and providing an approachable guide to current debates and methodologies.
Contributions by: Nancy Jiwon Cho, Frances E. Dolan, Rina Lahav, Jenna Lay, Laurence Lux-Sterritt, Carmen M. Mangion, Querciolo Mazzonis, Marit Monteiro, Elizabeth Rhodes, Kate Stogdon, Anna Welch
English Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. ... more English Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand nuns and sisters, establishing and managing significant Catholic educational, health care and social welfare institutions in England and Wales, have virtually disappeared from history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in the public and private sphere. Intertwining the complexities of class with the notion of ethnicity, Contested identities examines the relationship between English and Irish-born sisters.
Medical History, 2018
This article interrogates the complicated understanding of sectarianism in institutional cultures... more This article interrogates the complicated understanding of sectarianism in institutional cultures in late-nineteenth-century England through an examination of the practice of religion in the daily life of hospital wards in voluntary hospitals. Voluntary hospitals prided themselves on their identity as philanthropic institutions free from sectarian practices. The public accusation of sectarianism against University College Hospital triggered a series of responses that suggests that hospital practices reflected and reinforced an acceptable degree of ‘tolerable intolerance’. The debates this incident prompted help us to interrogate the meaning of sectarianism in late nineteenth-century England. How was sectarianism understood? Why was it so important for voluntary institutions to appear free from sectarian influences? How did the responses to claims of sectarian attitudes influence the actions of the male governors, administrators and medical staff of voluntary hospitals? The contradictory meanings of sectarianism are examined in three interrelated themes: the patient, daily life on the wards and hospital funding. The broader debates that arose from the threat of ‘sectarianism in hospital’ uncovers the extent to which religious practices were ingrained in hospital spaces throughout England and remained so long afterwards. Despite the increasing medicalization and secularisation of hospital spaces, religious practices and symbols were embedded in the daily life of voluntary hospitals.
This study of St Scholastica's Retreat offers an opportunity to examine a charity for the middle ... more This study of St Scholastica's Retreat offers an opportunity to examine a charity for the middle classes and the horizontal relationship between middle-class benefactors and recipients that did not appear to stigmatise middle-class recipients of charity. Middle-class inhabitants accessed a mix of resources, from personal resources, kinship relationships, friendship and charitable networks, as part of a ‘mixed economy of welfare’ so often discussed by welfare historians in Britain. Their ‘choices’ were limited but their personal networks enabled them to maintain their middle-class identities. This research not also demonstrates the flexibility of almshouse accommodation but also the meanings inherent in the domestic space that emphasised middle-class respectability.
19. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century , 2012
The history of pain, approached through phenomenology and the various rhetorics of pain can bring... more The history of pain, approached through phenomenology and the various rhetorics of pain can bring into sharp relief how pain is culturally derived and embedded in a society’s values and norms. This essay explores nineteenth-century Catholic interpretations of pain, utilizing biography to examine how and why corporeal pain functioned as a means of both reinforcing Catholic beliefs in the utility of pain and of coping with pain. It examines unwanted pain in a defined space, the convent, and through a particular source, the biography of Margaret Hallahan (1803–1868), founder of the Dominican Sisters of St Catherine of Siena, written by the future prioress, convert Augusta Theodosia Drane (1823–1894) in 1869. Pain contributed to Hallahan’s identity: her corporeal suffering and its meanings, which were religious, cultural, and political, were embedded in her life story. Pain, as an ‘unpleasant sensory and emotional experience’, is treated in this essay as a subjective event given its meanings by both Hallahan and her biographer. If we look at the performance of pain through this lens of subjectivity, examining the tenor of the emotional experiences derived from Hallahan’s bodily pain, relationships, especially those with her religious sisters, spectators of her pain-full illness, come into high relief pointing to the relevance of community and the place of the convent. This approach lays out Hallahan’s life, as interpreted by Drane but refracted within the life of the religious community, to develop the interplay between these three actors: Hallahan, Drane, and the Dominican sisters. The rhetorics of pain in Hallahan’s life story will unfold through three themes: the hiddenness of pain, the relevance of imitatio Christi, and the issue of consolation. Hallahan’s painful illness was used to affirm her sanctity but also to remind Catholics of the responsibilities and utility of bodily pain. Pain, though represented as private and hidden, became public property with the publication of the Life and became an epistemological tool used to define, reproduce, and reify Catholic ideals of living with pain-filled unwanted somatic suffering.
Women's History Review, 2012
This essay examines, using Foucault's concept of heterotopias and the Foucauldian notion of surve... more This essay examines, using Foucault's concept of heterotopias and the Foucauldian notion of surveillance, the Catholic sickroom as a sacred space, created and managed by women religious, where women could be mediators of the sacred. It considers how women religious shaped the meanings of the sickroom using a salvific spiritual message found in the directives, actions and bodies of the sister-nurse. By examining the Catholic sickroom as a crisis heterotopia, the multiplicity of meanings which were present in this ‘real place’ emerges. Catholic women religious in England provided alternate sites of medical treatment for Catholics where the medical and the sacred could co-exist. They entered into social relationships through a cultural discourse that structured their work as ‘caring’, yet they also took the opportunity to mould the religious practices and behaviour of patients within these spaces. The heterotopian place of the Catholic sickroom exposed the ‘real space’ where women ministered in all but sacramental ways to the spiritual needs of patients. This study positions women religious as key protagonists in the development of the sacredness of the sickroom as a social space thereby expanding the spheres of influence of women. The Catholic sickroom, both in the institution and in the home, provided an alternate social space where the politics of religion, theology, and gender added to the complex meanings of the sickroom.
History of Education, 2012
Much of the debates in late nineteenth-century Britain regarding the education of deaf children r... more Much of the debates in late nineteenth-century Britain regarding the education of deaf children revolved around communication. For many Victorians, sign language was unacceptable; many proponents of oralism attempted to ‘normalise’ the hearing impaired by replacing deaf methods of communication with spoken language and lipreading. While debates on language were raging in late nineteenth-century England, another facet of normalisation, that of occupational training, was being developed at St John’s Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the only Catholic deaf school in England. This school not only functioned to develop the Catholic faith of the deaf, but also expected to improve the social and economic status of deaf Catholics. Elementary education, and particularly occupational training, was meant to transform the deaf child into a faith-filled, respectable, working-class citizen. This essay aims at moving the normalisation debates away from language skills and towards this alternative mode of integration.
European Review of History, 2012
In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the... more In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorians grappled with welfare issues regarding the aged poor as social investigators sought to explain their dependency and poverty. Elderly men and women who were unable to care for themselves, and without a family or community to attend to their needs, had few alternatives outside the workhouse in nineteenth-century England and Wales. Catholic homes for the elderly managed by communities of women religious such as the Sisters of Nazareth provided an important option to the aged poor who often needed both accommodation and medical care. These homes provided a unique form of social welfare which attracted the attention of Protestants as well as Catholics as benefactors. Protestant reformers, looking for different approaches to maintaining the aged poor, inspected these Catholic homes in order to develop their own institutional solutions. Perhaps more pointedly, this interaction between Protestants and Catholics offers a counter narrative to the usual histories that emphasise anti-Catholicism, sectarianism and conflict. Despite the anti-Catholic tenor of the times, the homes for the aged of the Sisters of Nazareth were recognized and funded by both Catholics and Protestants as they were seen as providing a much needed form of charitable aid for the aged poor. As an alternative to poor law workhouses, the institutions created and managed by Catholic women religious formed an integral part of the mixed economy of welfare in the nineteenth century.
Women's History Review, Jan 1, 2007
The two formal stages of training, the postulancy and the novitiate, prepared women for the spiri... more The two formal stages of training, the postulancy and the novitiate, prepared women for the spiritual, vocational and communal aspects of religious life. Novitiate training in church history, doctrine and theology as well as her formal vocational training indicated that the novice was meant to be an educated and effective evangeliser of her faith. Ritual was an important part of convent life, especially as women moved from lay to religious life. Ceremonies, processions and devotions were rich in symbolism and emphasised the sacredness of the life being entered into. It was through the successful negotiation of the postulancy and novitiate that Catholic women religious demonstrated their power, although paradoxically it was obedience and docility that formed the basis of this power.
Women's History Review, Jan 1, 2005
Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten... more Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand women involved in these congregations have been rendered invisible in history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in negotiating the boundaries of religious life, sometimes to their collective benefit, sometimes not. Prescriptive literature gave one model of womanhood, married life, with a second model, single life, clearly an inauspicious alternative. Women religious provided a different model and created a religious, occupational and professional identity that varied from the prescriptive literature of the day. Their religious identity had as its goal their own ‘perfection’ and the salvation of others. Their occupational identity as ‘nun’ often encompassed a wide variety of tasks, but by the end of the century, the professional identity of nun as teacher or nurse was firmly in place.
Although deaconess life had its place in England from 1861, its growth in terms of numbers of dea... more Although deaconess life had its place in England from 1861, its growth in terms of numbers of deaconesses was not substantial. The role of the deaconess, though attractive to many religious women and men, was constrained by its perceived similarity to community-centred religious life (that of both Anglican and Roman Catholic nuns and sisters). Links with Kaiserswerth were important to the early beginning of many deaconess communities, but the need to distance the movement from ‘foreign’ elements echoed the cultural undercurrents which limited its growth and influence. Deaconess nursing was an important early means of ministerial outreach but its institutional form waned in some quarters by the end of the nineteenth century. The marginalisation of deaconess nursing, particularly in its institutional forms – the core concern of this article – was a result of the interplay between the religious mission of deaconesses and the developing sophistication of the medical marketplace.
in The Economics of Providence: Management, Finances and Patrimony of Religious Orders and Congregations in Europe 1773 to ca. 1930 edited by Maarten Van Dijck, Jan de Maeyer, Jeffrey Tyssens and Jimmy Koppen (Leuven University Press, 2013)., 2013
Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain …, Jan 1, 2010
Canadian Journal of Irish Studies , 2015
Social History of Medicine, 2014
Social History of Medicine, 2013
History of Education Researcher, 2011
Gender & History, Jan 1, 2011
Journal of Contemporary History, Jan 1, 2009
Journal of British Studies, 2008
Women's History Magazine, 2007
Nursing History Review, 2006
Voluntary Action History Society, Apr 9, 2012
In recent years, belief and non belief have developed new significance. What might once have been... more In recent years, belief and non belief have developed new significance. What might once have been valued as something individual and private in many contexts only a generation ago can now be a matter of open identification and even confrontation and judgement. In seeking to understand what has changed, memory has an important part to play: identifying how belief and non belief have played out at the level of family, community and society; recognising how people engage in the practices of belief and experience the institutions of organised religion. For reasons perhaps of prejudice, perspective and communal difference oral historians have largely neglected the topic of belief and non belief.
Going beyond studies which have focused on those with religious conviction, oral history offers the possibility to move debate outside the confines of institutionalised religion both conceptually and practically, pushing the boundaries of what is meant by belief. Indeed, it offers the ideal approach to understanding manifestations of belief and secularism at an individual level while tracking their relationship to shifting expressions of broader cultural norms and the conferment of identity. Tackling this exciting agenda, the remit of the Conference will be broad but contributions should focus on an oral history in relation to the following:
methodological challenges in understanding belief, secularism and religion
understanding the process of secularisation through oral history testimonies
inter-subjectivity in interviews on belief and non belief
the role belief plays in shaping memory
exploring the interface of religion, belief and cultural/ national identities
belief and education
belief and non belief in social, political and cultural transformations
shifting the narratives of religion away from an institutional base
gender and established religious institutions
sects and movements
Co-organised by Alana Harris and Wannes Dupont. In anticipation of the 50 th anniversary of Pope... more Co-organised by Alana Harris and Wannes Dupont. In anticipation of the 50 th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's promulgation of the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968), which sought to prohibit the use of contraception by practising Catholics through deeming it 'intrinsically dishonest', this colloquium seeks to bring together worldleading historians of gender, sexuality and modern Catholicism to discuss the differing reactions to and reception of the encyclical by Catholic laity and clergy across Europe. Situating the Vatican's highly controversial intervention in sexual ethics within the larger trajectory of debates about 'birth control' and the role of sex within marriage emerging since the Second World War, and as a little explored analogue to the social and sexual upheavals of the 1960s countercultural movements, the workshop will make an essential contribution to a growing historiography exploring 'around '68' by illuminating the gendered, material and metaphysical grounds for heated opposition and reinterpretation of the Vatican ruling. The format of the colloquium will be highly discussionorientated, based on the precirculation of papers and very short presentations (with a designated respondent) at the gathering. This is to ensure that there is ample time for indepth consideration of commonalities and contrasting factors in the 'reception' of HV and the identification of constructive theoretical and methodological perspectives. Welladvanced conversations are underway for the subsequent publication of selected contributors' papers within an edited volume to be published by Palgrave Macmillan . Research questions and scholarly objectives of the focused, comparative and interdisciplinary discussions include:
7 January 2015 at 6pm Institute of Historical Research Venue: Room 203, 2nd floor, IHR, North bl... more 7 January 2015 at 6pm
Institute of Historical Research
Venue: Room 203, 2nd floor, IHR, North block, Senate House
Time: Thursday, 6.00pm
This seminar is jointly funded by the IHR and the Oral History Society
The hierarchical structures of Catholic women's religious institutes have traditionally been crea... more The hierarchical structures of Catholic women's religious institutes have traditionally been created by male clergy. The approbation of religious congregations and orders could only occur through a local bishop or the pope in Rome. Their governing documents, the rules and constitutions, were rarely written by sisters or nuns. One of the many outcomes of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was a reappraisal of religious life that asked women religious to review their histories, their works and their structures. In response, sisters and nuns re-examined their organisational structures and rewrote their constitutions to fit the needs of the ‘modern world’. In some cases, they radically changed the way that religious life was lived and organised. This paper will use two case studies to argue that there was a growing awareness (at least for some) that their organisational structures were linked to patriarchy and privilege. The first case study is of a contemplative Order whose members insisted on a constitution 'by women and for women'. The second case study is of a religious congregation that revamped its corporate structure, from large communities to small communities, from hierarchical leadership to 'shared responsibility'. These changes were fraught with tensions, between sisters and clergy and between sisters and sisters. This paper will examine these tensions, with a focus on the discourse used by the women who both fought for change as well as those who resisted change.
http://www.chwr.org/tenth-triennial-conference-draft-program/ Welcome! The Tenth Triennial Confe... more http://www.chwr.org/tenth-triennial-conference-draft-program/
Welcome! The Tenth Triennial Conference on the History of Women Religious, “Whither Women Religious: Analysing the Past, Studying the Present, Imagining the Future” will be held from June 26-29, 2016, at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California.
Please use the menu on the left to access the draft program and other information to help you plan your trip. Registration will be available in early 2016. We very much hope to see you all there for what promises to be, as usual, a lively and informative gathering.
To see the tweeting of the conference proceedings see #nunintheworld and some reporting here: htt... more To see the tweeting of the conference proceedings see #nunintheworld and some reporting here: http://globalsistersreport.org/news/trends/sisters-story-includes-repeated-renewal-and-reinvention-25111
In collaboration with the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University, the Religious Life Institute at Heythrop College, and the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism is hosting this international conference at the University of Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway.
The conference will begin at 11:00am on Thursday, May 7 with a keynote address, and will conclude with the Final Presentation of the Religious Life Vitality Project, scheduled from 11:00am to 4:00pm on Saturday, May 9.
The General, three-day registration fee is $75.00. This fee is waived for the Cushwa Center's invited presenters. General registration includes: 1.) light lunches on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; 2.) welcome reception on Thursday evening; 3.) refreshments and snacks available throughout sessions on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; 4.) all meeting materials.
The fee for Saturday-only registration (for those attending only the Religious Life Vitality Project) is $25.00. Saturday-only registration includes: 1.) Light lunch at noon on Saturday; 2.) Refreshments and snacks available throughout Saturday sessions; 3.) All meeting materials.
Notre Dame faculty, staff, and students may attend at no charge, but must register.
An updated schedule (including details of Saturday's Final Presentation of the Religious Life Vitality Project, pp. 5-6), is available here.
The Economics of Providence / L'économie de la providence, 2013
The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, 2017
Book synopsis: In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be follo... more Book synopsis: In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be followed by a further 21 enclosed convents across Flanders and France with more than 4,000 women entering them over a 200-year period. In theory they were cut off from the outside world; however, in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely, and their communal culture was sophisticated. Not only were the nuns influenced by continental intellectual culture but they in turn contributed to a developing English Catholic identity moulded by their experience in exile. During this time, these nuns and the Mary Ward sisters found outlets for female expression often unavailable to their secular counterparts, until the French Revolution and its associated violence forced the convents back to England. This interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the cultural importance of the English convents in exile from 1600 to 1800 and is the first collection to focus solely on the English convents. Contents: Introduction, Caroline Bowden, James E. Kelly and Michael C. Questier; Part I Communities: From community to convent: the collective spiritual life of post-Reformation Englishwomen in Dorothy Arundell’s biography of John Cornelius, Elizabeth Patton; Essex girls abroad: family patronage and the politicization of convent recruitment in the 17th century, James E. Kelly; Missing members: selection and governance in the English convents in exile, Caroline Bowden. Part II Culture: Authorship and Authority: The literary lives of nuns: crafting identities through exile, Jenna D. Lay; Naming names: chroniclers, scribes and editors of St Monica’s Convent, Louvain, 1631-1906, Victoria Van Hyning; Translating Lady Mary Percy: authorship and authority among the Brussels Benedictines, Jaime Goodrich; Barbara Constable’s Advice for Confessors and the tradition of medieval holy women, Genelle Gertz; Shakespeare’s sisters: Anon and the authors in the early modern convents, Nicky Hallett. Part III Culture: Patronage and Visual Culture: Petitioning for patronage: an illuminated tale of exile from Syon Abbey, Lisbon, Elizabeth Perry; Parlour, court and cloister: musical culture in English convents during the 17th century, Andrew Cichy; Cloistered images: representations of English nuns, 1600-1800, Geoffrey Scott. Part IV Identity: Archipelagic identities in Europe: Irish nuns in English convents, Marie-Louise Coolahan; Divine love and the negotiation of emotions in early modern English convents, Laurence Lux-Sterritt; Avoiding ‘rash and imprudent measures’: English nuns in revolutionary Paris, 1789-1801, Carmen M. Mangion; Select bibliography of secondary sources; Index. About the Editor: Caroline Bowden is Research Fellow and former Project Manager of the ‘Who were the Nuns?’ project funded by the AHRC at Queen Mary, University of London, and has published a number of papers on women’s education and learning and the English convents in exile. James E. Kelly is post-doctoral fellow at Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies, Project Manager of the ‘Nuns’ project at Queen Mary’s and researches post-Reformation Catholic history in Europe and Britain. Reviews: ‘This is an important book in many respects. The editors have assembled fourteen chapters that bring together in one volume much impressive work that has been undertaken recently in looking at the foundation, sustaining, relevance and impact of the more than twenty communities of English nuns based in continental Europe during the period c.1600-1800… The volume is exceptionally well-presented, and organised through four sections: Communities, Culture: Authorship and Authority, Culture: Patronage and Visual Culture, and Identity. The footnoting is extensive, and an overall bibliography and index are provided. An unexpected delight in a work of this nature is the collection of twenty-eight colour illustrations - many of them never seen widely before or never seen in colour… this is a book not to be missed by all with an interest in Catholic history, women’s history, cultural history, the history of female religious, or just ‘history’ in this period.' Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland
Although deaconess life had its place in England from 1861, its growth in terms of numbers of dea... more Although deaconess life had its place in England from 1861, its growth in terms of numbers of deaconesses was not substantial. The role of the deaconess, though attractive to many religious women and men, was constrained by its perceived similarity to community-centred religious life (that of both Anglican and Roman Catholic nuns and sisters). Links with Kaiserswerth were important to the early beginning of many deaconess communities, but the need to distance the movement from ‘foreign’ elements echoed the cultural undercurrents which limited its growth and influence. Deaconess nursing was an important early means of ministerial outreach but its institutional form waned in some quarters by the end of the nineteenth century. The marginalisation of deaconess nursing, particularly in its institutional forms – the core concern of this article – was a result of the interplay between the religious mission of deaconesses and the developing sophistication of the medical marketplace.
This volume emerged from the realization that the history of women religious was attracting the i... more This volume emerged from the realization that the history of women religious was attracting the interest of an increasing number of scholars. We noticed the steady growth of the History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland (H-WRBI), a network of scholars initiated by Carmen Mangion and Caroline Bowden in 2001 to encourage research in the history of women religious. 2 Their annual conferences are consistently well-attended and gather scholars from all parts of the globe. Recently, other major conferences have testified to the vigour of research in women's spirituality. We have already mentioned Claire Renkin and Katherine Massam's 2007 conference in Melbourne (Australia), focusing on 'The Spirituality of Religious Women: From the Old World to the Antipodes, 1400-1900'. In 2009, Sarah Apetrei and Hannah Smith organised a conference on 'Women and Religion in Britain c. 1660-1760 in Oxford (UK), while Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Claire Sorin welcomed over forty sp...
Book synopsis: L’histoire sans les femmes n’est plus possible, l’affaire est entendue. Mais les r... more Book synopsis: L’histoire sans les femmes n’est plus possible, l’affaire est entendue. Mais les religieuses ont longtemps disparu dans les silences de l’histoire. Cet ouvrage collectif entend poursuivre l’effort historiographique qui tend au croisement de l’histoire des femmes et de l’histoire religieuse. Il s’inscrit dans le renouveau des recherches, en particulier dans l’espace anglo-saxon, dont beneficient aujourd’hui les congregations. Vingt-cinq textes abordent ici l’histoire des Filles de la Charite, les fameuses sœurs a « cornettes » qui appartiennent encore a l’imaginaire occidental. Apres quatre siecles, les Sœurs de Saint- Vincent-de-Paul demeurent a l’echelle du monde la plus importante des congregations catholiques (20 000 sœurs). Leur histoire n’avait pourtant jamais ete ecrite. Elle est desormais possible grâce a l’ouverture des archives de la maison mere a Paris, croisees avec des fonds publics et prives tant en France qu’a l’etranger. L’ouvrage aborde le temps long e...
Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 2020
Part IV: Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age: Britain, 1945–1990
Contested identities, 2019
Medical history, 2018
This article interrogates the complicated understanding of sectarianism in institutional cultures... more This article interrogates the complicated understanding of sectarianism in institutional cultures in late-nineteenth-century England through an examination of the practice of religion in the daily life of hospital wards in voluntary hospitals. Voluntary hospitals prided themselves on their identity as philanthropic institutions free from sectarian practices. The public accusation of sectarianism against University College Hospital triggered a series of responses that suggests that hospital practices reflected and reinforced an acceptable degree of 'tolerable intolerance'. The debates this incident prompted help us to interrogate the meaning of sectarianism in late nineteenth-century England. How was sectarianism understood? Why was it so important for voluntary institutions to appear free from sectarian influences? How did the responses to claims of sectarian attitudes influence the actions of the male governors, administrators and medical staff of voluntary hospitals? The c...
Choice Reviews Online, 2006
Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality, 2011
British Catholic History, 2016
Book synopsis: Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life ... more Book synopsis: Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life of exile in the convents of France, Flanders, Portugal and America. These closed communities offered religious contemplation and safety, but also provided an environment of concentrated female intellectualism. The nuns' writings from this time form a unique resource, documenting daily domestic and devotional pursuits, as well as issues of wider interest, such as record keeping, finance, national identity, transatlantic connections and the nature of exile. The majority of the documents in this six volume collection are extremely rare and previously unpublished. Each volume is given over to a particular theme: history, spirituality, life writing, management and the outside world. Documents have been chosen to cover a range of monastic orders and are contextualized by headnotes, endnotes and volume introductions as well as by a full, overarching general introduction. The collection brings to light over a hundred testimonies previously unavailable to scholars and will be a key resource for those researching social and religious history or women's intellectual history of this period.