Women's Leadership and the Foundations of Modern Catholic Universities

The Department of Catholic Studies, Women and Gender Studies and Center for Faculty Development at Seton Hall University invites you to a lecture: "Women's Leadership and the Foundations of Modern Catholic Universities," with our special guest being Bronwen McShea, Ph.D.

As McShea explains: "I hope that, after learning about a wide range of women who helped to found and build up Catholic institutions of higher learning here in the USA and around the world, my audience will better appreciate the fact that history is full of such pioneering and achieving women. I also want audience members to better understand that, if they haven't heard a lot about such women before, it's partly because we historians are still actively researching their legacies and telling their stories fully for the first time—and because the way we teach history, including that of Catholicism in all time periods, still has catching up to do in this area, as in others."

Women's contributions to the history of institutions and cultural movements we take for granted today remain little known, despite much labor in recent decades to change this. This is true of important contributions that both lay and consecrated women made to the foundations of modern Catholic universities and other institutions of higher learning.

This lecture will highlight some of these critical roles that women of the 19th and early 20th centuries played as foundresses, leading donors, administrators and trailblazing faculty members at a range of such institutions in the USA, Europe and Latin America. It will furthermore foster new appreciation of the ways that women of the past not only assisted, but also at times inspired, partnered with and guided bishops, orders such as the Jesuits and other male leaders in building up our now extensive, global network of universities and colleges with historically Catholic missions and identities.

About the Speaker:

Bronwen McShea is based in New York City and is a historian of Catholicism from medieval to modern times. She is the author so far of three books: Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know (Ignatius 2024); La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Vignerot, Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France (Pegasus 2023); and Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France (Nebraska 2019). Her writings have also appeared in many scholarly journals as well as popular forums such as The Wall Street Journal, America Magazine, The Pillar, First Things and La Civiltà Cattolica. McShea has held teaching and research positions at Columbia University, Princeton University and Loyola University Chicago, among other institutions. She holds a Ph.D. in Early Modern History from Yale University and both a masters in the History of Christianity and B.A. in Intellectual History from Harvard University.

Categories: Faith and Service