Marginalized Faith Commitments: Why Sisters’ History Must Critique the Liberal Feminist Subject

Abstract

Despite the diverse research on the history of American women religious, Catholic sisters remain marginalized in the field of women’s history because their history does not fit neatly in the historiographies of either conservatism or feminism. Why is this? Women’s history, which emerged in the second-wave feminist movement, continues to privilege the liberal feminist subject. Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety critiqued this bias in feminist frameworks (which view freedom as the expression of autonomous action and struggle) to see agency expressed by women who commit to religious beliefs as preserved by patriarchal religious traditions. This historiographical essay explores why scholarship on Catholic sisters must contribute to the critique of the liberal feminist subjecthood—as elaborated by Mahmood—as the de facto interpretation of freedom. Catholic sisters expressed agency by committing to a religious institution rather than by freeing themselves from patriarchal structures or acting individually. Considering the recent historiography on Catholic sisters alongside the shifting body of literature on women’s history, the history of Catholic sisters will continue to be marginal to women’s history unless scholars begin to critique the field’s central bias.