The Eighty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association

Report of the Committee on Program

The 2009 annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association took place, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Historical Association and other affiliated societies, at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers from Friday, January 2, to Monday, January 5, 2009.

The Program Committee was made up of Ann M. Harrington, B.V.M. (Loyola University Chicago); Thomas Noble (University of Notre Dame); Karen Scott (DePaul University); and Robert Bireley, S.J. (Loyola University Chicago), chair.

The program opened with two sessions at 1 p.m. on January 2. One session dealt with “The Multiple Roles of Catholic Missionaries in Asia and Beyond in the Twentieth Century.” Papers were given by Carmen M. Mangion (Birkbeck, University of London), “‘Arousing the Imagination and Exposing Modesty to Danger’: Catholic Women Religious and Sexual Purity”; by James T. Carroll (Iona College), “The Downside of the Rising Sun: Jesuits and Christian Brothers in Wartime Philippines”; and Angelyn Dries, O.S.F.(Saint Louis University), “Enemy Aliens: Maryknoll Men in Japan, 1939–1945.” Ann M. Harrington, B.V.M., served as chair, and Margaret S. Thompson (Syracuse University) as commentator. The second session, “Religion in Late Antique Antioch,” was sponsored jointly with the American Society of Church History. Presentations were made by Silke Sitzler (Australian Catholic University), “Perceiving and Positioning the Poor: Poverty and Christian Identity in Late Antique Antioch”; Christine Shepherdson (University of Tennessee at Knoxville), “From Mountaintop to Marketplace: The Topography of Authority in Fourth-Century Antioch”; and Wendy Mayer (Australian Catholic University), “What’s in a Name? Cathedral, Martyrium, and Church in Late Antique Antioch.” Elizabeth A. Clark (Duke University) chaired the session and commented.

The session at 3:30 that afternoon, “Liam Brockey’s Journal to the East: The Jesuit Mission in China, 1579–1724,” experimented with a new format. Prof. Brockey made a brief presentation on his book, and three members of the panel discussed the book from different perspectives: Robert Entenmann (St. Olaf College), from the perspective of the historian of China; Robert Schreiter, C. PP.S. (Catholic Theological Union in Chicago), from that of the historian of Christian missions; and John W. Witek, S.J. (Georgetown University), from that of the historian of the Jesuits. Jonathan D. Spence (Yale University) chaired the session. That afternoon, the Executive Council of the Association also met.

There followed the next morning a session sponsored jointly with the American Historical Association and the Society for Austrian and Habsburg History, “Anna Coreth’s Pietas Austriaca Fifty Years After: At Home and Abroad.” William D. Bowman (Gettysburg College) spoke on “Anna Coreth’s Pietas Austriaca: Religious Culture and Politics in the Habsburg Empire”; Alejandra B. Osorio (Wellesley College), on “Imperial Pietas Austriaca: Baroque Piety in the Spanish Habsburg New World Empire”; and Joseph F. Patrouch (Florida International University), on “Girlish Devotions: The Piety of Habsburg Archduchesses in the Late Sixteenth Century.” Robert Bireley, S.J. (Loyola University Chicago), chaired the session, and Paula S. Fichtner (Brooklyn College, City University of New York) commented. A second session at the same time was devoted to “Women and Society in the Middle Ages,” a panel jointly sponsored by the American Society of Church History. It included papers by Fiona J. Griffiths (New York University), “Funding Christ’s Brides: Nuns, Monks, and Money in the Twelfth Century”; Anne E. Lester (University of Colorado at Boulder), “Putting Women in Order: Cistercian Nuns and the Reform of the Women’s Religious Movement in the Thirteenth Century”; and Katherine L. French (State University of New York at New Paltz), “Margery Kemp and the Parish.” John Van Engen (University of Notre Dame) chaired and commented.

Two sessions took place that afternoon. At “Isaac Hecker and the American Church: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Paulists,” three presentations were made. David J. O’Brien (College of the Holy Cross) spoke on “Hecker’s Contribution to American Catholicism”; John Farina (George Mason University) on “The Uses of Hecker’s Early Diaries”; and R. Scott Appleby (University of Notre Dame) on “What Hecker Would Say...