Kathleen Sprows Cummings

Professor of American studies and history

Department: American Studies

Area of Specialization:

women and religion

Kathleen Sprows Cummings is a professor of American studies and history at Notre Dame, and an concurrent faculty member in Gender Studies, Italian Studies, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. She is also a fellow of the Keough Institute for Irish Studies and the Ansari Institute for Global Religious Engagement.

Cummings’ most recent book, A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2019. Cummings’ first book, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era, also was published by North Carolina 2009. She co-edited, with R. Scott Appleby, Catholics and the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History (Cornell University Press, 2012). She also co-edited, with Timothy Matovina and Robert Orsi, Catholics in the Vatican II Era: Local Histories of a Global Event, published in 2017 with Cambridge University Press. She is also the editor of Roman Sources for the Study of American Catholicism, 1763-1939, a guide to 59 archival repositories in Rome and at the Holy See, which was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2018. Cummings served as the president of the American Catholic Historical Association in 2017.

Cummings teaches classes on the history of women, Catholicism, sanctity, and American religion at the University of Notre Dame. She was the coordinator of the "Conference on the History of Women Religious" from 2013-2023. She often serves as a media commentator on contemporary events in the Church. Cummings appeared on NBC’s live coverage of the conclave in March 2013, the canonization of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII in April 2014, and the papal visit to the United States in September 2015. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times and other media outlets on Catholic subjects.

Gender Studies Courses:

• Faith and Feminism in America
• Gender and Catholicism
• Sanctity and Society