Marty Center Events | Shannen Dee Williams on the Hidden History of Black Catholic Nuns

Join us for a lecture by Dr. Shannen Dee Williams, author of "Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle," which was published by Duke University Press in 2022.
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. Williams explores 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 minster as consecrated women of God in the Roman Catholic Church. In so doing, she turns attention to women's religious life as a stronghold of white supremacy and racial segregation, and thus an important battleground in the long African American freedom struggle.
Dr. Williams, Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton, is an historian of the African American experience with research and teaching specializations in women’s, religious, and Black freedom movement history. Her book "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.
This event was co-presented with the Lumen Christi Institute. It was co-sponsored by the Catholic Theological Union and by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago.