Synopses & Reviews
Catholics were among the early Spanish explorers to the "New World," and they have a long and rich history in the United States. By taking account of significant letters, diaries, theological reflections, and other primary documents, we can listen to the voices of what real Catholics in this country have thought, believed, feared, and dreamed.
American Catholic History makes available original documents produced in North America from the earliest missionary voyages in the sixteenth century up to the present day. The texts have been selected to illuminate the complex history, beliefs, and practices of what has become North American Roman Catholicism. They are prefaced by brief editorial introductions which provide historical and biographical context for the texts. They illuminate broad themes in the development of the tradition, from its grappling with new frontiers to its long-time status as outside mainstream culture, and from its intellectual life and political engagement to patterns of worship and spirituality.
American Catholic History offers an overview of the American Catholic experience from both the "top down" of institutional and intellectual history as well as from the "bottom up" of social, devotional, women's and ethnic histories.
Review
"A unique collection of primary sources that everyone interested in the presence and contributions of Catholics in America should read. With its multidisciplinary breadth, this volume truly represents Catholic Studies."
"This rich documentary collection thematically engages U.S. Catholicism both in the life of the nation and in the lives of everyday believers. It is a welcome single-volume reference of primary documents on American Catholicism suitable for course adoption."
“Mark Massa and Catherine Osborne have performed a great service in assembling this reader. They not only bring together seventy documents that capture the breadth and depth of the American Catholic expericen, but they also provide a useful conceptual framework for understanding them.“
Review
"In a refreshingly wide-ranging study, Bow compares the circumstances of the Lumbee Indians with those of Asians--the two groups were not classified as black or white. The author considers the consequences of intermarriage in the racialization of Asians, as well as the roles of class and gender. Above all, she explores the rich interstitial possibilities of Asians' being "in-between" set categories. This stimulating read is suitable for a broad audience... Highly Recommended."-CHOICE,
Review
“Intelligent and provocative. Partly Colored exemplifies the full possibility of ‘trans scholarship—transnational, transracial, transgender, and transdisciplinary. With a deep appreciation of the ways in which mobility, hybridity and interstitiality itself exist within systems of power, accommodating themselves to the tropes and laws of the white supremacist South, Bow consistently demonstrates the telling power of black/white divisions.”
-David Roediger,author of How Race Survived U.S. History
Review
“Through her brilliantly executed and wide ranging analyses of how Asian Americans, Native Americans and other ‘partly colored subjects in the American South have been depicted and have depicted themselves, Bow reveals the region to be haunted by a different set of racial histories than the ones with which we have become familiar. She offers a revelatory perspective on how those who occupy the liminal zone between black and white negotiate the dynamic and contradictory social processes that sustain a monochromatic conception of race.”
-Daniel Y. Kim,author of Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow: Ralph Ellison, Frank Chin and the Literary Politics of Identity
Review
"Scrutinizing the bipolar axis of power separating black from white under the Jim Crowe system of segregation, Bow tracks the oppression and elision of those who are "partly colored" -- here chiefly Asian Americans but with comparative nods to Native Americans and the binaries characterizing gender and sexuality . . . What she finds is not a "third space" apart from black or white but an eneven extension of repression of racial differences into which Asian American subjects are shoehorned or erased."-Leslie Bow,The Journal of American History
Synopsis
An overview in primary documents of almost four hundred years of the American Catholic experience
Catholics were among the early Spanish explorers to the "New World," and they have a long and rich history in the United States. By taking account of significant letters, diaries, theological reflections, and other primary documents, we can listen to the voices of what real Catholics in this country have thought, believed, feared, and dreamed.
American Catholic History makes available original documents produced in North America from the earliest missionary voyages in the sixteenth century up to the present day. The texts have been selected to illuminate the complex history, beliefs, and practices of what has become North American Roman Catholicism. They are prefaced by brief editorial introductions which provide historical and biographical context for the texts. They illuminate broad themes in the development of the tradition, from its grappling with new frontiers to its long-time status as outside mainstream culture, and from its intellectual life and political engagement to patterns of worship and spirituality.
American Catholic History offers an overview of the American Catholic experience from both the "top down" of institutional and intellectual history as well as from the "bottom up" of social, devotional, women's and ethnic histories.
Synopsis
Catholics were among the early Spanish explorers to the "New World," and they have a long and rich history in the United States. By taking account of significant letters, diaries, theological reflections, and other primary documents, we can listen to the voices of what real Catholics in this country have thought, believed, feared, and dreamed.
American Catholic History makes available original documents produced in North America from the earliest missionary voyages in the sixteenth century up to the present day. The texts have been selected to illuminate the complex history, beliefs, and practices of what has become North American Roman Catholicism. They are prefaced by brief editorial introductions which provide historical and biographical context for the texts. They illuminate broad themes in the development of the tradition, from its grappling with new frontiers to its long-time status as outside mainstream culture, and from its intellectual life and political engagement to patterns of worship and spirituality.
American Catholic History offers an overview of the American Catholic experience from both the "top down" of institutional and intellectual history as well as from the "bottom up" of social, devotional, women's and ethnic histories.
Synopsis
Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit?
By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially “in-between” people and communities were brought to heel within the Souths prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation.
Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of “third race” individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.
About the Author
Mark Massa, S.J., is the Karl Rahner Professor of Theology and the co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of
Catholics and American Culture and
Anti-Catholicism in America.
Catherine Osborne is a doctoral student at Fordham University.