America's Real Sister Act: The Hidden History of Black Catholic Nuns in the United States

Apr 27, 2023

Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture

1025 E 58th St.
Chicago, IL 60637

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Shannen Dee WilliamsUniversity of Dayton

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This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact info@lumenchristi.org.

This event is co-presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. Cosponsored by St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Chicago, America Media, the Center for Gender Studies, the Center for Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, the History Department at the University of Chicago, the Thea Bowman Foundation, and the Catholic Theological Union.

For most people, Whoopi Goldberg's performance as Sister Mary Clarence in Sister Act is the dominant interpretation of an African American nun and the desegregation of white Catholic sisterhood in the United States. In this presentation, Dr. Shannen Dee Williams will explore the story of America's real sister act: the story of how generations of Black women and girls called to the sacred vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience fought against racism, sexism, and exclusion to become and minister as consecrated women of God in the Roman Catholic Church.

Dr. Shannen Dee Williams is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton. She is the author of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle, which was published by Duke University Press in 2022. Subversive Habits was named a top five book published in religion by Publishers' Weekly in 2022. It also received the 2022 Letitia Woods Brown Award for Best Book in African American Women's History from the Association of Black Women Historians.

REGISTER HERE for In-Person

REGISTER HERE for Online