But a celestial brightness—a more ethereal beauty—
Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession,
Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her.
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
Nuns loom large in American art depicting the Catholic Church, from Oscar winning films like The Bells of St. Mary’s, Song of Bernadette, and Lilies of the Field, to paintings by Andrew Wyeth and Andy Warhol. This artistic portrait of the American Church has some basis in fact—of the twelve canonized saints claimed in some way by the United States, seven of them were nuns. It should come as little surprise then that when American authors tell the story of the Church in the United States, they are in the habit of foregrounding nuns, from the poems of Longfellow, to the histories of Hawthorne, from the comic musings of Flannery O’Connor to the lovely novels of Willa Cather.
This season of Global Catholic Literature will focus on three figures: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose Acadian epic Evangeline tells a story of Catholic immigration to eighteenth-century America; Rose Hawthorne, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, literary convert, and nun; and Flannery O’Connor, whose writings fictional and non-fictional paint a comic picture of the American nun. On the 250th anniversary of the American Founding, Longfellow, Hawthorne, and O’Connor will take us to the nunneries and trace the subtle, indispensable role nuns have played in the American Church from the Founding to the present day.
Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. The dying
Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold there
Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor…
Dates: Mondays in October, 7:00 - 8:30 PM ET
October 5 with Collegium Staff
October 12 with Timothy E.G. Bartel (Professor of Great Texts and Theology at Saint Constantine College and author of Glimpses of Her Father’s Glory: Deification and Divine Light in Longfellow’s Evangeline)
October 19 with Collegium Staff
October 26 with Jessica Hooten Wilson (Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and author of Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do The Heathen Rage)
Location: Virtual via Zoom. The link will be distributed to participants via email in advance of each session.
Registration:
Early Bird Registration: $65 through September 5
Regular Registration: $75 through October 1
To register, click the button below. Questions? Please contact Joe Perez-Benzo (jperezbenzo@collegiuminstitute.org).