| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith. Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1999. Pp. xii, 327. Cloth $55.00, paper $19.95.

That two scholars—one specializing in American history, and the other European history—have collaboratively written a study of a century of life in an American women's religious community is fitting for the uncharted territory that they set out to explore. Nineteenth-century nuns, as Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith point out, would have approvingly described such a joint venture as "avoiding 'singularity'"; at the turn of the twenty-first century, readers can welcome Coburn and Smith's study as a significant "feminist collaboration." This book weaves the story of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet into the broader tapestry of American history during the period 1836–1920, documenting ways that the order's contributions to the fields of education, health care, and social services strengthened both the American Catholic community and the country. 1

The authors state that the goal of their book is to "place Catholic sisters within the mainstream of American history and women's history, and show the sisters' lives and activities to be as complex, varied, and interesting as the lives of their Protestant and secular peers" (p. ix), a worthy aim, and itself enough for the book to be considered ground breaking, since American nuns, marginalized by their religion and gender, have not often been the subject of scholarly investigation. . . .

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