Franco-American Women and Parochial Schools

Did She or Didn't She?: Franco-American Women and Parochial Schools Proceedings

This work serves the purposes of filling in and fleshing out. We are beginning to fill in voids in

the study of women's literature, which has long neglected the output of New England's largest ethnic group though a Franco-American women's literary tradition exists

and the history of American Catholicism, which sometimes seems to read like the history of Irish-American men

We are fleshing out the embodied realities, of which stereotypes are distorted oversimplifications.

Did Franco-American girls go to parish schools?
Were teachers at these schools nuns?
Were nuns uniquely talented torturers of children?
What happened to catechism during Vatican II?
When did the parochial school system really die, or has it?

A diverse group of Franco femmes provide their own answers from their own, often humorous perspectives to these questions and many more. Assess for yourself the degrees of contradiction and corroboration. When the edited volume is available, we'll update this page with information on how to obtain it.
A companion video is for sale now. Ten Franco-American women talk openly about their parochial school experiences, or not. All have different views.

Franco-American Women's Institute

Last updated September, 2002