Brokers of Culture

by McKevitt, Gerald

• ISBN13: 9780804753579
• ISBN10: 0804753571
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-14
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

Brokers of Cultureexamines the interactions among multiple ethnic groups in the American West and a group of nearly four hundred Italian Jesuits who emigrated to the United States after 1848 in the wake of the Italian unification movement. The first wave of exiles taught in Jesuit colleges on the East Coast, where they played a major role in reforming American seminary education. From their eastern base, the dispersed clerics moved to the frontier, shaping the evolution of culture in eleven western states. The Jesuits' most powerful source of influence was their western colleges, which adhered to educational traditions brought from Europe while simultaneously meeting the needs of an ethnically mixed and mobile frontier population.

Author Biography

Gerald McKevitt is Ignacio Ellacuría SJ Professor of Jesuit Studies at Santa Clara University. He is author of The University of Santa Clara: A History, 1851-1977 (Stanford University Press, 1979).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xiii
1. Introduction: The Jesuits	1
2. "Out with the Jesuits": Becoming Refugees	14
3. "Instant Despatch": The Ideology of Emigration	36
4. "Witnesses to Shortcomings": Reforming Jesuit America	61
5. "Attracted Toward Remote Lands": Becoming Western Missionaries	91
6. "Methods Adopted by Us": The Art of Indian Conversion	120
7. "Habits of Industry and Useful Toil": Native American Education	150
8. "The Darkest Part of the U.S.A.": The Southwest	178
9. "Who Could Have Done Anything Like This in Italy?": The Colleges	208
10. "Our Pen Is at Your Service": Mediating Cultures	234
11. "A Delicate State of Transition": Jesuits Divided	264
12. "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi": Foreign No More	296
13. Conclusion	320
Abbreviations	329
Notes	331
Glossary	395
Index	397