“Catgut in God’s Hands”: The Maryknoll Sisters’ Korean Mission and Gendered Foreign Policy: 1950-1960
Hannah Ontiveros, Lecturer of History, Binghamton University
“Catgut in God’s Hands” examines the Maryknoll Sisters’ mission to Korea in the 1950s. Utilizing the records of the Maryknoll Sisters, publicity materials from the Catholic order, and UN records on voluntary aid organizations, this chapter underlines the vital role of religious organizations in articulating the United States’ role in Korea. As this paper argues, the Sisters intertwined their goal of spreading American benevolence with their emerging Catholic vision of human rights: the Sisters worked toward their own ends as well as those of their home country. Moreover, the Sisters had an outsized impact on long-term state-building projects.
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Register and Request PaperAbout the Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar Series
The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar explores topics in religion and culture including social history, biography, cultural studies, visual and material culture, urban studies, and the history of ideas. We are interested in how religious belief has affected society, rather than creedal or theological focused studies. The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar is co-sponsored by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, the McGreal Center at Dominican University, the History Department at Loyola University, the University of Chicago Divinity School, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Wheaton College.