Since the Vatican’s widely-publicized criticism of American Catholic nuns in 2012, religious sisters have risen into the public consciousness. For decades, thousands of religious sisters in the United States have served within a rigid patriarchal Church that does not always recognize their contributions, yet relies on them to carry out its ministries. Through an emphasis on their missions of service to the poor and work for social justice, religious sisters emerged from this contentious situation with Rome as intelligent and dedicated women who lead dynamic lives that often go unnoticed. Through a case study of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia, I analyze individual sisters’ lived experiences. In this research, I seek to understand the congregation’s institutional culture to uncover how religious sisters develop strategies to live out their mission of service to the poor and marginalized, and how they continue to advocate for social and structural change in the Catholic Church and in secular society. Specifically, I conducted interviews with 23 Sisters of St. Joseph and analyzed archived writings, letters, and congregational documents dating back to the late 1960s. I submit that over the past 50 years since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), the Sisters of St. Joseph actively embraced gender consciousness and social justice as a means of empowerment toward social change, despite the institutional pressures within the Church and society that discourage this. I argue that the progressive spirit and commitment to social justice indicative of a feminist orientation created a dissonance between religious sisters and Church leadership, while simultaneously increasing their integration into secular society. Ultimately, I contend that their congregational mission of unity and reconciliation, their status as sisters in a religious community, and privilege as educated women allows the Sisters of St. Joseph to be courageous risk-takers in advancing social and structural change in both the Catholic Church and the world. In addition to the 23 semi-structured interviews, I used qualitative content analysis to explore the congregation’s primary archival documents, especially those published from the periodic general chapters just after Vatican II through the most recent chapter in summer 2014. These chapter meetings are called roughly every five years, during which time the Sisters of St. Joseph elect congregational leadership and articulate the community’s organizational vision and direction. At each chapter’s conclusion, the congregation publishes a document(s) that informs its mission and work for the next several years. In addition to these public documents, I was granted access to the Sisters of St. Joseph congregational archives, where I analyzed notes, letters, minutes, voting records, proposals and enactments, and personal recollections of the general chapter meetings. In total, I analyzed nearly 300 documents from the Sisters of St. Joseph congregational archives. In my textual analysis, I used subjective interpretation of language in the text with particular attention placed on its content and contextual meaning in order to identify themes or patterns. Once I identified the major themes, I grouped them into three theoretical areas, which became the empirical chapters 4, 5, and 6 of this study. Chapter 4 argues that the sisters’ move toward active social justice work and advocacy after Vatican II is evidence of lived religion for this congregation. Chapter 5 analyzes how the Sisters of St. Joseph navigate issues of gender and sexuality in the Church, in their congregation, and in society. Chapter 6 looks at how the congregation contends with race and ethnicity within their own community, but also in the lives of the people they serve in their various ministries. Finally, in chapter 7, I conclude by examining how the congregation moved toward a more democratic, corporate structure focused on long-term viability in the decades after the Second Vatican Council. Ultimately, I argue that as the congregation evolved after Vatican II, they broke through what I call a “glass cloister.” Through the renewal process, the Sisters of St. Joseph emerged from decades of restriction as sisters reborn, reclaiming their original congregational focus and eager to live out their lives in service to others. As convent rules loosened and the sisters claimed their voices within the Catholic Church structure and in secular society, the congregation defined itself as a dynamic community of women dedicated to social justice and advocacy for the poor and marginalized. / Sociology

This dissertation examines how advocates for anatomical medicine in the early American republic defended medical training through dissection by framing anatomy as a Protestant spiritual and civic initiative. The project draws attention to prominent anatomists and anatomy advocates from the 1760s to the 1830s who did not dismiss the religious values and rhetoric of the people who rioted against dissections and bodysnatching, but instead imaginatively remodeled the Christian principles that had been wielded against them. Utilizing the public forums that were afforded to them as wealthy white Protestant intellectuals, these figures drew upon the mythologies of the new nation as well as the New Testament to defend the practice of dissection and persuade a largely Protestant public of the virtues of the dissected corpse. As this project will emphasize, they also used evangelical Protestant ideology to justify the pillaging of African American cemeteries and almshouse burial grounds for dissection subjects. Reinforcing an evangelical Protestant and portrait of nativist American citizenship, their rhetoric would ultimately play a powerful role in shaping state intervention in the regulation of medical schools and their supply of anatomical subjects. This project ultimately aims to reframe our understanding of the discursive formation of the dead body as a medical subject in the early republican era, seeking to illuminate how dead bodies were talked about—how they were discursively formed—by those who opened and examined them: practitioners of practical anatomy who not only dissected dead bodies, and likely disinterred them, but also launched public campaigns to repurpose them as tools of medical training. Tapping into the era’s evangelical postmillennialist rhetoric of resurrection, these figures petitioned the state and the public to draw a line between the respectable white citizens who contributed to civic progress, whose bodies would remain undisturbed after burial, and indigent and non-white populations, who could be made productive after death. At once religious and medical, their rhetoric functioned epistemically to transform medical training into a mode of Protestant civic discipleship, and to transform the dead bodies of socially and politically burdensome populations into redeemed post-mortem vessels of medical advancement. Recognizing the production of medical knowledge in the United States in a wide range of genres, authored by writers operating within as well as outside of the fledgling orthodox medical establishment, this dissertation analyzes the imaginative writings, both positive and critical, of doctors, ministers, satirists, novelists, and legislators, all of whom registered and reflected upon the framing of practical anatomy as a conduit of Protestant civic initiative. In “Dr. Shippen’s Anatomical Theatre: Defending Dissection in Colonial Philadelphia,” I examine an early model of this rhetoric in the writings and orations of Dr. William Shippen, Jr., one of the earliest outspoken advocates of anatomical dissection in the colonies, demonstrating how Shippen relied on Protestant language and cultural norms—and the colonial newspaper—not only to align himself and his anatomy lectures with the city’s religious elite, but also to create a spiritual justification for the use of the bodies of poor, criminalized, and otherwise subjugated individuals as dissection subjects. The chapter closes by tracing how two subsequent texts, a satirical pamphlet poem by Francis Hopkinson and a landmark state legislative report in defense of anatomical dissection, registered and responded to this rhetoric, and to the collusion of Protestant virtue and medical authority as tools of social order. “The Enlightened Gospel of Anatomy on the Atlantic Stage” spotlights Presbyterian minister Samuel Stanhope Smith’s 1787 Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, and Federalist statesman Royall Tyler’s 1797 novel The Algerine Captive. Situating both texts within transnational debates about American degeneracy and the expansion of the American slave economy, I outline how each author mounts a defense of American health and character that is grounded in anatomical knowledge of the human body as well as a Protestant framework of moral virtue. Taken together, the texts bear witness to a growing confidence in doctors—particularly anatomists—to understand and order human difference, and they demonstrate the continuing rhetorical framing of anatomical medicine as a Protestant civic initiative in the decades after the American Revolution. The dissertation’s final chapter, “ ‘life, strength, and usefulness’: Resurrection and Redemption in Sheppard Lee,” examines the ongoing consolidation of Protestant rhetoric in support of anatomical medicine in the early nineteenth century, as both American and British lawmakers began to take up the case for legislation to regulate and protect anatomical training for medical students through dissection. The chapter begins by identifying the rhetoric of Philadelphia anatomist John Davidson Godman as a principal influence in the development of the first American anatomy legislation, demonstrating how Godman utilized the rhetoric of Protestant nativism to strategically position anatomical medicine as a beacon of enlightened Christianity in the young republic, while also preserving the secrecy of an illicit interstate corpse trafficking network centered in 1820s Philadelphia. The chapter then considers how a novel written by a physician who was trained in Philadelphia’s medical institutions during this period engages with Godman’s rhetoric, and with the various debates and philosophies surrounding anatomy legislation in the Anglo-Atlantic world. In Robert Montgomery Bird’s 1836 Sheppard Lee: Written by Himself, Bird mimes and critiques the rhetoric of utilitarian anatomy advocacy, as well as the Protestant rhetoric of redemptive dissection. Bird generates a provocative cultural portrait of institutionalized dissection in the Atlantic world, underscoring the political distinctions that ultimately determined which corpses should be protected, which should be dissected, and which should be preserved. Considering corpses not merely as abstractions or metaphors, but as literal, material entities that incited riots, spurred industries, and inspired nativist fantasies, this dissertation illuminates the fraught negotiations and acts of power that undergirded what is often regarded as a natural or inevitable narrative of modern secularization and scientific progress. At its most ambitious, this project aims to embody a new dimension of interdisciplinary work in the medical humanities, reshaping our understanding of the origins of the medical cadaver and prompting new reflection on the secular morality of postmortem medical research. / English

This dissertation is a study of how religion is manufactured, policed, imagined, and defended in the modern United States. It traces the history of one group, MOVE, from its inception in the late 1960s to the present in order to illustrate how the category of religion functions in the modern United States. The central premise of the book is that MOVE people believed MOVE was a religion. They believed, nearly from the very beginning of the group, that John Africa was a prophet who communicated on behalf of the divine, that his Teachings were inspired and had supernatural effects on the body, and that MOVE people had a role to play in a cosmic conflict between forces of good (The Law of Mama) and forces of evil (The System). Despite this, MOVE was rarely allowed to be a religion. That is, MOVE’s claim that they had a religion was, more often than not, dismissed. Historians of religion have, in recent years, begun turning their attention to the people with the power to define lived experience as either religious or secular. In MOVE’s case, the people who defined their experience as secular, and not religious, included police officers, judges, journalists, established religious leaders, and politicians. At various points throughout MOVE’s history, these social actors articulated a series of claims about what “true religion” was and why MOVE did not count. The disconnect between how MOVE people viewed themselves and how MOVE was understood by most outside the group points to the central concern of this dissertation. / History

Sources from the late antique and Byzantine eras attest that some Christian spouses adopted marital celibacy, or married persons' abstention from sexual intimacy, as an ascetic practice. The prevalent scholarship on marital celibacy has all too often read later practices of marital celibacy into earlier texts, due to scholars' tendency to universalize ascetic practice. This study endeavors to dismantle such universalizing by demonstrating the differences among four church fathers' approaches and attitudes toward marital celibacy, assuming neither the popularity of the practice nor the immediate affirmation of its necessity for marital ascetic piety. The dissertation explores the theme of marital celibacy in the works of four of the most influential men of the late fourth and early fifth centuries --Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, and Augustine of Hippo-- through a careful analysis of various sources, from funeral orations to hagiographies, to sermons to dogmatic treatises, to letters and to monastic rules. It questions whether the practice was widely embraced in both the eastern and western regions of the empire and distinguishes between theoretical and pragmatic acceptance of marital celibacy. Not only does the study place the men's beliefs regarding marital celibacy within their larger teachings on marriage and virginity, but it also emphasizes the way in which each man's social context and pastoral role contributed to his rhetoric on the topic. It considers the ways in which the rhetoric surrounding marital celibacy intersected with the men's agendas and perspectives concerning other matters, such as their promotion of their saintly family (Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa), their monastic program (Basil), and their apologetics (Augustine). The project highlights the nuances among each father as well as the divergences between the east (represented by the Cappadocians) and west (represented by Augustine). Although each man discusses the topic of marital celibacy in some way and endorses its practice, at least ideally, they also indicate that not everyone was embracing marital celibacy, nor was every ecclesial leader promoting its practice as necessary for marital piety. Their writings reveal that at least a few people had adopted marital celibacy, and that many people--bishops and laity alike--were attempting to understand its theoretic and pragmatic place and role in the Christian life, particularly in light of Paul's instructions in 1 Corinthians 7. Despite efforts to offer a conclusive analysis of marital celibacy in the works of these four church fathers, the limitations caused by the divergences in the fathers' rhetoric, due to the distinctive contexts and genres of their writings, hinders a straightforward conclusion. Thus this dissertation serves as a glimpse into the diversity of early Christian marital practices through the lens of marital celibacy, underscoring the complexity of both belief and behavior in the late antique Christian world. / Religion

This work examines ethnic group identities among the Muslim population in the Iberian Peninsula, or al-Andalus, between 881 and 1110 C.E. It specifically addresses three moments in Andalusi history in which ethnic conflict erupted into the political sphere: 1) The revolt of Ibn Hafsun in the late Ninth/early Tenth Century C.E. 2) The collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate in the late Tenth/early Eleventh Century C.E. 3) The arrival of the North African Almoravid dynasty in the late Eleventh/early Twelfth Century C.E. Through an investigation of each period it argues that ethnic categorization in al-Andalus has been under-theorized. The work addresses the complications of religious conversion and the resultant ramifications on religious identity, which, over time, significantly influenced deployable ethnic identities among the Muslim population. It utilizes the theoretical tools of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu in order to re-conceptualize the understanding of Andalusi Muslim ethnic group identities. It considers how the role of women and systems of clientage have been underappreciated in the understanding of these identities and through attention to these dynamics argues that Andalusi Muslims created an Andalusi Arab Muslim identity that increasingly unified and strengthened this social group as the political structure around it disintegrated. / Religion

Since the early 1970’s, Rastafari has enjoyed public notoriety disproportionate to the movement’s size and humble origins in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica roughly forty years earlier. Yet, though numerous academics study Rastafari, a certain lacuna exists in contemporary scholarship in regards to the movement’s scriptural basis. By interrogating Rastafari’s recovery of the Hebrew Bible from colonial powers and Rastas’ adoption of an Israelite identity, this dissertation illuminates the biblical foundation of Rastafari ethics and symbolic registry. An analysis of the body of scholarship on Rastafari, as well as of the reggae canon, reveals the centrality of an Israelite identity for Rastas and its enabling of Rastafari resistance to racial oppression. Furthermore, the Hebrew Bible is, for Rastas, key to an intimate relationship with Jah, for it reveals their chosenness and their inherent divine nature. They both textually confirm this election and enact it through ritual practice. By interrogating the methods Rastas apply to the pages of the Bible in order to ascertain their appointment and decipher proper ritual practice, this dissertation expands scholarly conversations about Rastafari biblical hermeneutics. Centering on readings of Samson and Moses, it suggests that these two biblical actors function as moral exemplars and models of livity for Rastas. Despite the transgressive nature of Samson and Moses, Rastas adopt them as co-practitioners and paradigms of Rastafari election because when Samson and Moses are Rastas, all Rastas can claim their chosenness, strength, and relationship with Jah. / Religion

Religious spaces are inextricably bound to the seventeenth century's most challenging theological and epistemological questions. In my dissertation, I argue that seventeenth-century writers represent specifically religious spaces as testing grounds for contemporary theological and philosophical debates about the material foundations of religious knowledge and the epistemological foundations of religious community. By examining how religious concerns shape the period's construction of literary spaces, I contend that religion's developing privacy reflects this previously unexamined conversation about religious knowledge and communal belief. My focus on the central theological and philosophical ideas that shape these literary texts demonstrates how this ongoing conversation about religious space contributes to the increasingly individuated character of religious knowledge at the beginning of the long eighteenth century and shapes the history of religion's social dimension. I explore this conversation in two distinct parts. I first examine those writers who contend with new sensory and experiential bases of religious belief as they represent dedicated religious spaces. After considering how Nicholas Ferrar's family pursues religious knowledge through dedicated religious spaces, I argue that John Milton's Paradise Regained evaluates competing bases of religious knowledge through an extended debate about religious space and knowledge. Finally, I contend that Margaret Cavendish transforms an imagined convent space into an argument that nature serves as the sole source of religious knowledge. In the second part, I examine writers who contend with the social consequences of individual accounts of religious knowledge. The sequel to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress articulates the writer's struggle to reconcile an individual epistemology with the concerns of the religious community. Like Bunyan, Mary Astell seeks to unify individual believers with her proposal for a rationally persuasive Cartesian religion. Finally, William Penn relies on the solitary space of the conscience in his advertisements for Pennsylvania. As these writers seek to reconcile the individual's role in the production of religious knowledge with religion's social manifestations, they associate religious belief and practice with increasingly private, bounded constructions of space. These complex articulations of religion's place in the world play a significant role in religion's developing spatial privacy by the end of the seventeenth century. / English

Of the thousands of Buddhist manuscripts discovered at Dunhuang, there are many examples of non-official sūtras and dhāraṇī collections more difficult to identify than those with titles identical to canonical sūtras. Manuscript collection catalogs are the first sources consulted when one undertakes research involving manuscripts and in order to be a truly valuable resource, they need to reflect current scholarship. This thesis studies the Dunhuang manuscript, Pelliot chinois 3538, from different perspectives, examining its ritual, iconography, and textual variances. It compares its iconographical program to manuscript sūtras and canonical scriptures, uncovering new information regarding the content of multiple manuscripts. From this research it is apparent that P.3538 is an Avalokiteśvara dhāraṇī ritual that is iconographically informed from a variety of canonical texts: sūtras in the Nīlakaṇṭha/Qianshou cluster, the Mahāpratisarā dhāraṇī sūtra and its corresponding amulet culture, and sūtras connected with the bodhisattva’s narrative history. In examining other manuscripts from Cave 17, we have found that it is a member of a Dunhuang manuscript cluster and is visually represented in an ink on paper altar diagram, Stein no. Ch.00189, from the British Museum. Integrating these findings would enrich descriptive catalogs for future research. / Religion

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This dissertation examines a brief history of the Catholic Church’s engagement with athletics in the United States between 1890 and 1950. In the standard narratives of American religious history, Catholics in the United States were eventual (if reluctant) adopters of the masculine, character-building ideals traditionally associated with certain sports as espoused by the Protestant-centric Muscular Christian movement. I argue that Catholics had their own motivations for turning to sports and articulated its positive value through Catholic religious ideals, what I call Muscular Catholicism. Muscular Catholicism is distinct from Muscular Christianity for its emphasis on communitarianism over rugged individualism and promotion of material religious practices, like partaking in the sacraments, as crucial elements to athletic success. I explore the dimensions of Muscular Catholicism through a synthesis of archival and secondary sources which elucidate on the intersections of Catholic history, masculinity, and athletics in the United States. After a brief review of relevant academic literature and discussion of the Muscular Christian approaches to sports, I highlight the application of Muscular Catholicism through three models of Catholic athletics: the University of Notre Dame’s football team in South Bend, the athletic programs at Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, and the athletic leagues of the Catholic Youth Organization in Chicago. Each of these models illustrate the investment of institutional Catholicism in utilizing athletics to mold Muscular Catholics and provide them with the confidence to assert their place in American society. I conclude this work with a summary of my findings, acknowledgement of the limits of analysis that this project possesses, and offer suggestions on how this dissertation provides a theoretical foundation for future scholarship. / Religion