Newsletter
"God's Kingdom Lies Ahead: American Catholicism in Historical Perspective"
Download the current newsletter cover article here.
About Cushwa
The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism is widely recognized as the leading center for the historical study of Roman Catholicism in the United States. Cushwa Center seminars, conferences, and research projects, many of which produce scholarly volumes or popular educational publications, engage a national body of historians and colleagues from theology, women's studies, sociology, religious studies, American studies, and English. The public role of the Center encompasses providing resources and critical commentary for media coverage of U.S. Catholicism and collaborating with church leaders and pastoral workers to enhance the vitality of Catholic life in the United States. In all aspects of its mission--research, teaching and faculty development, and public service--the Cushwa Center seeks interdisciplinary and ecumenical cooperation.
The Center began operations in 1975 after its first director, historian Jay Dolan, explored the idea with his colleagues in the history department at Notre Dame and received initial funding from the Provost. In 1981 the Charles and Margaret Hall Cushwa family of Youngstown, Ohio provided the Center with a major endowment. Charles B. Cushwa, Jr., a 1931 graduate of Notre Dame, had a love of history and a lifelong commitment to the vitality of American Catholicism. His wife, Margaret Hall Cushwa, was a graduate of Saint Mary's College and became a respected community leader and patron of Catholic cultural and charitable organizations in Youngstown; she was instrumental in seeing that the Cushwa name would be properly memorialized at Notre Dame and Saint Mary's.
The fourteen books published to date in the Notre Dame Studies in American Catholicism series, as well as specialized studies of the Irish experience in America, the growth of Hispanic Catholicism in the United States, and the history of Catholic parish life, have built the Cushwa Center's reputation. Increasingly, the Center is also winning recognition for important interdisciplinary research in American religion and culture, the experiences of women in American religious history, the impact of the Second Vatican Council on the American Catholic community, and the public presences and diverse religious practices of U.S. Catholic women and men in the twentieth century. Cushwa Center programs include its popular Seminar in American Religion, a bi-annual Newsletter that reaches a wide range of scholars and church leaders, and special projects like the Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America book series, recently launched with Cornell University Press.