“Thirty Years Later: Remembering the U.S. Churchwomen in El Salvador and the United States,” U.S. Catholic Historian, Special Issue on U.S. Catholics and Latin America: Commemorating the U.S. Churchwomen 38, no. 4 (2020): 119-144

Four U.S. missionaries were murdered in El Salvador in December 1980. Based on my experience as a participant-observer at the commemorative events for the women in El Salvador and Washington, DC, thirty years later, I argue that the women continued to inspire, but that the anger directed at the U.S. government for its role in El Salvador had largely been replaced with anger toward the institutional Catholic Church.

“Clothes Make the Nun? Feminism, Fashion, & Representations of Catholic Sisters in the 1980s,” Gender & History, 31, no. 2 (2019): 480-499

In the late 1970s and 1980s, I argue, the habit debate gained new salience with John Paul II’s papacy and sisters’ activism regarding female ordination, abortion, and U.S.-Central America policy.

“Not Above the Fray: Religious and Political Divides’ Impact on U.S. Missionary Sisters in Nicaragua,” U.S. Catholic Historian, Special Issue on War & Peace, 37, no. 1 (2019): 147-166

In late October 1983, provincials and generals of units with sisters in Nicaragua met to discuss what, if anything, U.S. missionaries might do to address divides in the Nicaraguan Church. Their call suggested that they regarded themselves as unaffected by the Nicaraguan divisions, but, as I argue, the meeting revealed that the women were divided amongst themselves and even within their own communities.

“Reagan’s Real Catholics vs. Tip O’Neill’s Maryknoll Nuns: Gender, Intra-Catholic Conflict, and the Contras,” Diplomatic History 40, no. 3 (2016): 530-558

Tip O’Neill’s decision to oppose U.S.-Nicaragua policy based on the advice of the oldest U.S. order of missionary nuns, Maryknollers, led the White House and its supporters to question O’Neill’s authenticity as a Catholic and his masculinity.  The response to the O’Neill-Maryknoll connection, I argue, revealed how intra-Catholic conflict overlapped with and influenced debates about U.S.-Central America policy.

“Medellín is ‘Fantastic’: Drafts of the 1969 Rockefeller Report on the Catholic Church”  The Catholic Historical Review 101, no. 4 (2015): 809-834

Since the 1970s, both foreign and U.S. opponents of U.S.-Central America policy have cited the 1969 Rockefeller Report on the Americas: The Official Report of a United States Presidential Mission for the Western Hemisphere as the beginning of U.S. government efforts to eradicate liberation theology. But, I argue, early report drafts of the Report and Rockefeller’s comments reveal that he enthusiastically welcomed the Medellín documents.