Rita Cassella Jones Series
Thanks to the generosity of Robert Jones, PhD, professor emeritus, Fordham University, and the Jones family, the Curran Center sponsors lectures on women’s issues in the North American Catholic community.
Click lecture titles to view videos and news coverage of the events.
20th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Management, Not Ministry: The Future of Women in the Catholic Church?
Presented by: Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D.
Tuesday, September 17th, 2024
19th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
The Evil of Violence Against Women and The Hope Manifest in Pope Francis’ Enduring Legacy
Presented by: Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Ph.D.
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023
18th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Knots Within Knots: Unraveling the Intersectional Dimensions of Catholic Anti-Blackness
Presented by: Maureen H. O’Connell, Ph.D., professor of Religion and Theology at La Salle University
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
17th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
The Juncture of Worlds: Scholarship as a Way of Life and Living as a Scholarly Practice
Presented by: Mary Corley Dunn, Ph.D., University of St. Louis
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
16th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
In the Shadow of the Cross: Black Women and the Making of U.S. Catholicism
Presented by: Shannen Dee Williams, Ph.D., Albert LePage Assistant Professor of History, Villanova University
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
15th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
November 5, 2019
Cuéntame: How Women's Storytelling Shapes the Future of the Church
Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Professor of Religious Studies, Manhattan College
14th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
October 9, 2019
An Atlas of Another and Difficult World: Gender, Race, and the Church
M. Shawn Copeland, Professor of Theology, Boston College, author of Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being
13th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Tuesday, November 14th, 2017
Feminist Theology in a Divided World: Walls and Paths for Global Solidarity
Maria Pilar Aquino
8th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Tuesday, October 16th, 2012
A Family Affair: Catholic Women and the Birth Control Question
Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Catholic University of America
7th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
With Understanding Start Again: O God of Players 10 Years Later
Julie E. Byrne, Hofstra University
6th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Jecture
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Changing History: Women in the American Catholic Past
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, PhD, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame
5th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Thursday, October 19, 2009
Black Women of Virtue: The Oblate Sisters of Providence in Antebellum America
Diane Batts Morrow, PhD, Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Georgia and author of Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860
4th Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Historic Mission vs. Transformative Change in a Catholic Women's College: Reflections from Trinity College in the District of Columbia
Jeanne Lord, PhD, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs, Georgetown University
3rd Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Monday, April 21, 2008
American Catholic Women Within and Without Parishes: A Sociological View
Mary Johnson, SND, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, Emmanuel College, Boston
2nd Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Imaginations of Catholic Children
Robert A. Orsi, Charles Warren Professor the History of Religion in America, Harvard Divinity School
1st Annual Rita Cassella Jones Lecture
Thursday, November 3, 2005
The Gospel of Dorothy Day
Julie Leininger Pycior, Professor of History, Manhattan College, author of LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power