30/06/2026 14:30 - 17:30

HALL: Pola - A103

Contact: Perin R.

Chair: Perin R.

The panel aims to explore, from a diachronic and transnational perspective, the role of the "feminine" in the history of Catholicism of the 20th century. Through the examination of various case studies, it seeks to analyze the models of femininity and masculinity constructed by Catholicism and reinterpreted by historical actors, the power relations between women and men, and the ways in which lay and religious women mobilized, as well as the causes and struggles that motivated their engagement. Ángela Pérez del Puerto will focus on the ideological crusade of American Catholicism during the 1940s and 1950s against immoral contents in popular reading and comic books. Raffaella Perin will deal with the history of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas (CDA) - a lay women organization founded in Utica, New York in 1903 as a charitable, benevolent and patriotic sorority for Catholic ladies. The paper aims at sketch the uncovered history of CDA, and to devote particular attention to the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Juliette Masquelier's paper will compare the rural and upper-class Catholic masculinisties in France and Belgium between the 1930s and 1980s. Maria José Esteban will explore an alternative model of femininity that, while not free from tensions, enjoyed a certain degree of legitimacy within Catholic discourse during Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Carmen Mangion will examine the Catholic women religious (sisters and nuns) and HIV/AIDS ministries in Britain in the 1980s-2000s, whereas Raul Minguez Blasco will tackle the debate on the access of women to ordained ministries. The panel highlights the complexity and plurality of the articulations of the "feminine" and the "masculine" in twentieth-century Catholicism, showing how these categories were constantly negotiated, contested, and redefined in relation to political, social, and cultural contexts.