Bruno-Jofré draws extensively from private archives and oral histories to bring to light the inner life of the congregation and their educational work. She demonstrates that the Sisters played an important role in building a French Canadian identity in Manitoba and Quebec and provides a glimpse into their complex relationship with the Oblate Fathers including their role as auxiliaries in the residential schools.

The year 2015 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second Vatican Council, which aimed to align the Church with the modern world. Over the last five decades, women religious have engaged with the council’s reforms with unprecedented enthusiasm, far exceeding the expectations of the Church. Addressing how Canadian women religious envisioned and lived out the changes in religious life brought on by a pluralistic and secularizing world, Vatican II and Beyond analyzes the national organization of female and male congregations, the Canadian Religious Conference, and the lives of two individual sisters: visionary congregational leader Alice Trudeau and social justice activist Mary Alban. This book focuses on the new transnational networks, feminist concepts, professionalization of religious life, and complex political landscapes that emerged during this period of drastic transition as women religious sought to reconstruct identities, redefine roles, and signify vision and mission at both the personal and collective levels. Following women religious as they encountered new meanings of faith in their congregations, the Church, and society at large, Vatican II and Beyond demonstrates that the search for a renewed vision was not just a response to secularization, but a way to be reborn as Catholic women.

This thesis examines the Roman Catholic religious order, the Oblate Sisters of Providence (OSP), and their roles as educators, religious women, and community leaders from the antebellum period through the Reconstruction era.In 1828, the Oblate's founder, Mother Mary Lange, created the religious order alongside Sulpician Priest, Father James Nicholas Joubert. The Oblate Sisters' primary mission was to educate African American girls despite the pressures to the contrary in the slaveholding state of Maryland. Also, the Oblate sisters had founded their school, Saint Frances Academy, which offered African American girls a religious, classical, and vocational education. The school endeavored to give students a skillset to survive in the local economy while allowing young girls and religious nuns to positively define notions of Black womanhood through the Catholic faith.As the first female Catholic religious order of African descent in the United States, the Oblate sisters endured opposition from both the Catholic Church and the community of Baltimore. Even though the strict consecrated life required by the church could be perceived as oppressive of women, especially Black women who lived in a society restricted by enslavement, the Oblates successfully built a sanctuary community that offered a degree of freedom for young African American girls and women.This thesis argues that the Oblate's actions offered Black girls and women possibilities to resist societal expectations of Black womanhood. However, empowering Black girls and women to specifically reject these expectations was not the order's intent. The community did not see themselves as activist or Black feminists. Instead, the Oblates embraced the Cult of True Womanhood, which restricted women significantly. However, by following these traditional gender standards, the Oblates upended racist expectations of Black womanhood. As a result,their contributions during the antebellum period through Reconstruction aided the educational advancement of African American girls and women and challenged the intersectional oppression they encountered in the Catholic Church, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and American society at large.