Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / Few would dispute the notion that consumerism is a prevailing feature of American culture. The extent to which consumer culture dominates the way most people see the world makes imagining alternatives to consumerism almost impossible. This stultification of imagination is highly problematic. As it stands, consumer culture, measured by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, demonstrably tends to inhibit human flourishing on personal, social, and global levels. There is a need to transform consumer culture in order to support human flourishing more robustly, and this barrenness of imagination impedes that transformation. This dissertation assumes that it is a task of teachers in faith to educate toward cultural alternatives that better support human flourishing. This task requires engaging in and developing what Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann calls "prophetic imagination." The prophetic imagination involves both deconstructing the taken-for-granted dominant culture and entering into a community whose practices, values, and ideals effect an alternative culture. While here focused on consumer culture, this model of educating for prophetic imagination has broader applicability; it can also be used, for example, to challenge cultures of racism, sexism, and militarism. This education in imagination develops in what scholars of management Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger call "communities of practice." Jesus and his disciples model for Christians a community of practice that imagines and acts prophetically. Communities of practice that educate for prophetic imagination ought to measure their own imagination against Jesus's prophetic imagination, shaped by his understanding of the Reign of God. This portrait of communities of prophetic practice is fleshed out in an exploration of empirical studies of communities that engage learners and draw them into an imagination that re-shapes not only how they see what the world is but also how they envision what the world can be. Communities of practice that educate for prophetic imagination can foster the transformation of consumer culture into a culture that better supports human flourishing. In order to do so, however, they must start with an anthropology that adequately understands what flourishing entails. These communities ought to be attentive to three aspects of the human person that tend to be given short shrift in consumer culture: the person's role as a creative producer, the person's inherent relationality, and the person's need embrace finitude, the limitations of human capability. The Church should be utilizing communities of practice to overcome the sterility of imagination and contribute to a culture of what might be called humanizing plenitude. This culture supports the fullness of human thriving by re-imagining what that thriving entails and engaging in practices to facilitate it. The Church as teacher can be involved in this education for the purpose of cultural transformation to enhance human flourishing in various arenas. Finally, this dissertation particularly proposes that this education can happen in higher education, in parishes, and in collaboration with the wider community. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / This dissertation considers adolescent girls and what they need from an all-girls’ Catholic school that will prepare them, not just for college and career, but for life in a world that marginalizes girls and women. More than simply trying to make a case for single-sex schooling for girls, it suggests that the single-sex school is an important site for conversations about what it means for adolescent girls to be adolescent girls. This project names the patriarchal forces that marginalize girls and calls for a pedagogical approach that is rooted in the theological affirmation that adolescent girls are created in the image of God and called to exercise a prophetic imagination. Chapter one introduces the history of all-girls’ Catholic secondary schools, a history rooted in the story of women’s religious orders and the ministries of these women religious as educators at a time when the education of girls was not valued. Today’s all-girls’ Catholic schools are informed by this history and the Catholic Church’s commitment to honoring the dignity of each student, thus grounding a commitment to a caring and liberative educational approach. Chapter two argues that contemporary adolescent girls, including those who attend these all-girls’ Catholic secondary schools, are growing up in a cultural milieu that makes them vulnerable to the effects of the conflicting and impossible expectations to which girls and women are held. Chapter three investigates the imago Dei symbol as a theological foundation for fighting this toxic cultural milieu. Taking a cue from feminist theologians who have explored embodiment and relationality as central expressions of the imago Dei, this chapter proposes that creating communities of God’s hesed (loving-kindness) and resisting injustice are two ways that the imago Dei symbol can be expressed so as to best include adolescent girls. Chapter four suggests that, in order to realize this goal of affirming the imago Dei in adolescent girls by creating communities of God’s hesed and resistance to injustice, a feminist prophetic imagination is needed. Drawing on Walter Brueggemann’s identification of the prophetic imagination as the twinned process of denouncing the oppressive forces of the dominant culture and announcing a new and more just way of being in the world, it proposes a feminist prophetic imagination that engages in a feminist critique of the cultural milieu that girls experience and the construction of communities based in hesed and resistance to injustice. Chapter five takes up the pedagogical challenges of teaching with and for a feminist prophetic imagination. The liberative pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the caring pedagogy of Nel Noddings provide the resources for educating adolescent girls to participate in communities of God’s hesed and in practices of resistance to injustice. Chapter six returns to the concrete situation of all-girls’ Catholic secondary schools and imagines how these schools can speak to a commitment to educating for a feminist prophetic imagination in their mission and reflects on how a feminist prophetic imagination can be expressed and formalized in all Catholic schools.