This book analyses the development of Catholic schooling in Scotland over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholarship of this period tends to be dominated by discussions of the 1872 and 1918 Education (Scotland) Acts: while these crucial acts are certainly not neglected in this volume, the editors and contributors also examine the key figures and events that shaped Catholic education and Catholic schools in Scotland. Focusing on such diverse themes as lay female teachers and non-formal learning, this volume illuminates many under-researched and neglected aspects of Catholic schooling in Scotland. This wide-ranging edited collection will illuminate fresh historical insights that do not focus exclusively on Catholic schooling, but are also relevant to the wider Scottish educational community. It will appeal to students and scholars of Catholic schooling, schooling in Scotland, as well as Christian schooling more generally.

Michael P. Carroll argues that the academic study of religion in the United States continues to be shaped by a "Protestant imagination" that has warped our perception of the American religious experience and its written history and analysis. In this provocative study, Carroll explores a number of historiographical puzzles that emerge from the American Catholic story as it has been understood through the Protestant tradition. Reexamining the experience of Catholicism among Irish immigrants, Italian Americans, Acadians and Cajuns, and Hispanics, Carroll debunks the myths that have informed much of this history. Shedding new light on lived religion in America, Carroll moves an entire academic field in new, exciting directions and challenges his fellow scholars to open their minds and eyes to develop fresh interpretations of American religious history.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.