American Patroness

Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism

Edited by Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park

Contributor(s): Adrienne Nock Ambrose, Lloyd Barba, James S. Bielo, Katherine Dugan, David J. Endres, Kayla Harris, Patrick J. Hayes, Joseph Laycock, Karen E. Park, Terry Rey, Stephen Selka, Claire Vaughn and Andrew Walker-Cornetta

Catholic Practice in the Americas

Published: 2023

ISBN: 9781531504885

Page Count: 320

Illustrations: 42 b/w illustrations

Formats:

Price: $40.00

Buy Now

Description: A vital collection of interdisciplinary essays that illuminates the significance of Marian shrines and promises to teach scholars how to “read” them for decades to come.

American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism is a collection of twelve essays that examines the historical and contemporary roles of Marian shrines in US Catholicism. The essays in this collection use historical, ethnographic, and comparative methods to explore how Catholics have used Marian devotion to make an imprint on the physical and religious landscape of the US. Using the dynamic malleability of Marian shrines as a starting place for studying US Catholicism, each chapter reconsiders the American religious landscape from the perspective of a single shrine to Mary and asks: what does this shrine reveal about US Catholicism and about American religion?

Each of the contributors in American Patroness examines why and how Marian shrines persist in the twenty-first century, and subsequently uses that examination to re-read contemporary US Catholicism. Because shrines are not neutral spaces—they reflect and shape the elastic yet strict boundaries of what counts as Catholic identity, and who controls prayer practices—the studies in this collection also shed light on the contested dynamics of these holy sites. American Patroness demonstrates that Marian shrines continue to be places where an American Catholic identity is continuously worked on, negotiations about power occur, and Marian relationships are fostered and nurtured in spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate.
Reviews: This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of Marian shrine devotionalism that I have read, and I urge everyone interested in understanding the enduring power and persistence of shrines devoted to the Virgin Mary to read this book. American Patroness is an exciting and important new collection that features top scholars of Catholicism who effectively translate the power and beauty of belief, prayer, and community in shared and communal spaces. Deeply researched and clearly written and excellent for class use.---Kristy Nabhan-Warren, author of Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland

American Patroness is a major contribution to the study of US Catholicism and American religion. The helpful introduction and vivid case studies offer surprising insights about the complexity and vitality of devotion today, not only at traditional shrines but also tourist sites, urban underpasses, and digital spaces. Indispensable for specialists but of interest to everyone who wants to know more about the contemporary religious landscape.---Thomas A. Tweed, author of Religion: A Very Short Introduction

American Patroness is beautiful in its multiplicity. This is much more than a book on Marian shrines, it is a book that explores Catholic devotion in its radical, conservative, and irreverent registers. Here we find informal shrines made from murals and underpasses, and shrines in their most triumphalist institutional forms—each offering a different vision of what it means to be Catholic in the US. Across these shrinescapes, Catholics work out approaches to immigration, disability, reproductive politics and gentrification. Shrines are no quaint remnants of a Catholic devotional past, but a key, mutable resource for exploring the contours of Catholicism in our contemporary world.---Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, author of Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Mary tumbles into material existence at shrines throughout the United States, where devotees celebrate her special powers to help navigate their lives. In American Patroness, we finally have an interdisciplinary collection of studies of Marian “shrinescapes,” from old revered churches to new highway underpasses, in all their endurance, adaptability, mess, and excess. Particularly wonderful is the metaphor of “conversation” used by editors Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park—a theoretical innovation that invites us to “start anywhere” in understanding places that “pile on” many meanings, including multiple Marys. Anyone interested in US religion will be lucky to tumble into this critical new analysis of Mary’s reach and importance in America. Start anywhere, but get in on the conversation.---Julie Byrne, Msgr. Thomas J. Hartman Chair of Catholic Studies at Hofstra University
Details: ISBN-13 9781531504885
Published: 2023-11-07

Trim: 6.000in x 9.000in x 0.000in
Contributors: Contributions: Adrienne Nock Ambrose
Contributions: Lloyd Barba
Contributions: James S. Bielo
Contributions: Katherine Dugan
Katherine Dugan is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Springfield College (MA), where she studies contemporary US Catholics and teaches courses in American religion. She is the author of Millennial Missionaries: How a Group of Young Adult Catholics is Making Catholicism Cool.
Contributions: David J. Endres
Contributions: Kayla Harris
Contributions: Patrick J. Hayes
Contributions: Joseph Laycock
Contributions: Karen E. Park
Karen E. Park is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Norbert College (WI). She is a frequent contributor to Religion Dispatches and other online and print publications on religion and culture in the US.
Contributions: Terry Rey
Contributions: Stephen Selka
Contributions: Claire Vaughn
Contributions: Andrew Walker-Cornetta