Dissertation Abstracts

Institution	Title	Page
Boston College	For Richer, for Poorer: Jesuit Secondary Education in America and the Challenge of Elitism	80
The Catholic University of America	Schools of Mission Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Peru, 1922-2000	80
Fordham University	American Catholics and the Art of the Future, 1930-1975	81
Loyola University (Chicago)	"Not peace but the sword": Violence in Contemporary American Catholic Literature	82
Loyola University (Chicago)	Reaping the "Colored Harvest": The Catholic Mission in the American South	82
Loyola University (Chicago)	The Costumed Catholic: Catholics, Whiteness, and the Movies, 1928-1973	83
Temple University	The Limits to Catholic Racial Liberalism: The Villanova Encounter with Race, 1940-1985	83
University of California (Santa Barbara)	Religion and Power among the Eastern Pueblos of New Mexico: Patron Saint's Feast Days as Sites of Adaptation and Continuity within Colonial and National Contexts	84
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)	The Politics of Abortion and the Rise of the New Right	85
University of Wisconsin	A Marketplace of Schooling: Education and the American Regulatory State, 1870-1930	86

We include here selected dissertation abstracts in the fields of U.S. Catholic history, sociology, theology, architecture, art, cinema, music, popular movements, and related areas that we believe our readers will find to be of particular interest. Those interested in submitting an abstract for possible publication in the dissertation section of American Catholic Studies should do so electronically to americancatholicstudies@villanova.edu in Microsoft Word format.

Boston College

Beaumier, Casey Christopher. For richer, for poorer: Jesuit secondary education in America and the challenge of elitism Boston College, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2013. 3590577, accessed January 26, 2014.

In the 1960s American Jesuit secondary school administrators struggled to resolve a profound tension within their institutions. The religious order's traditional educational aim dating back to the 1500s emphasized influence through contact with "important and public persons" in order that the Jesuits might in turn help direct cultures around the world to a more universal good. This historical foundation clashed sharply with what was emerging as the Jesuits' new emphasis on a preferential option for the poor. This dissertation argues that the greater cultural and religious changes of the 1960s posed a fundamental challenge to Catholic elite education in the United States. The competing visions of the Jesuits produced a crisis of identity, causing some Jesuit high schools either to collapse or reinvent themselves in the debate over whether Jesuit schools were for richer or for poorer Americans.

The dissertation examines briefly the historical process that led to this crisis of identity, beginning with the contribution of Jesuit education to the Americanization of massive numbers of first and second-generation immigrant Catholics as they adjusted to life in America in the first half of the twentieth century. As Catholics adapted, increasingly sophisticated American Jesuit schools became instrumental in the formation of a Catholic elite, and many of the institutions found themselves among elite American schools. This elite identity was disrupted by two factors: the cultural volatility of the 1960s and the Jesuits' election of a new leader, Pedro Arrupe. While some Jesuit educators embraced Arrupe's preferential option for the poor, others feared it would undercut the traditional approach of outreach to the elite. Through a case study of one Jesuit boarding school, the dissertation seeks to expand our understanding of the impact of 1960s social change into the less-explored realms of religion and education.

The Catholic University of America

Pelletier, Annette M. Schools of Mission Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Peru, 1922-2000: The Catholic University of America, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2013. 3563020, accessed January 26, 2014.

The first permanent mission of the United States Catholic Church in South America was a Catholic private school established by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) in Lima, Peru, in 1922. The IHM Sisters of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sent four sisters to Lima in response to the invitation of Emilio Lisson Chávez, CM, the Archbishop of Lima. Cardinal Dennis Dougherty agreed to Lisson's request to find a religious community of women to teach in a school that the...