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{en} Gerald McKevitt. Brokers of culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848-1919. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. / Repr. 2022.

Abstract

"Brokers of Culture examines 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."--Back cover.

Contents

Introduction: The Jesuits -- "Out with the Jesuits": becoming refugees -- "Instant despatch": the ideology of emigration -- "Witnesses to shortcomings": reforming Jesuit America -- "Attracted toward remote lands": becoming western missionaries -- "Methods adopted by us": the art of Indian conversion -- "Habits of industry and useful toil": native American education -- "The darkest part of the U.S.A.": the Southwest -- "Who could have done anything like this in Italy?": the colleges -- "Our pen is at your service": Mediating cultures -- "A delicate state of transition": Jesuits divided -- "Sic transit Gloria Mundi": foreign no more -- Conclusion.