Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920

Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-- 1920. By Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1999. Pp. xiii, 327. $49.95 clothbound; $19.95 paperback.)

In examining "the intersection of gender, religion and power" (p. ix) in America, Carol Coburn and Martha Smith put Catholic sisters at the center of American history and women's history. While sisters were conforming to nineteenth-century gender ideology and meeting the educational and social-service needs of America's immigrant population, they were also creating "an unprecedented female power base that enabled independent activity limited patriarchal interference and control, and significantly shaped American Catholic culture and public life" (pp. 7-8). Drawing on recent scholarship which shows how Protestant women used religion, gender, and power to create many...