Fields
American history; modern Catholicism; modern American religion; religion and psychoanalysis; religion and media; religion, the arts and film
Teaching
Frequently offered: Witches to Walden Pond/Religion in Early America; Religion in Modern America; Catholicism in the New World; Religion Right Now
Less frequently offered: Religions of the West; Global Christianity; Popular Religion
University Affiliations
Secondary appointment in the Department of History; core faculty member of the Program in Cultural Studies; affiliated faculty, European Studies Center of the University Center for International Studies. Served as a founding member for the Governing Board of the Pitt Humanities Center
Professional Experience
Professor Kane was the Senior Scholar and a visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, 1996-1997. She has also been a visiting faculty member at Clark University, Department of History and an assistant professor in the History Department of Texas A&M University.
Recent Interviews
90.5 WESA - The Growth And Decline Of Pittsburgh's Catholic Population
- PhD, Yale University, 1988
Education & Training
Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America, University of North Carolina Press, 2013. (ISBN; 978-1-4696-2658-1)
Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920, University of North Carolina Press, 1994.(ISBN; 978-0-8078-5364-1)
Gender Identities in American Catholicism, American Catholic Identities Series, Orbis Books, 2001 [coeditor with James Kenneally and Karen Kennelly]. (ISBN; 978-1570753602)
*** Honorable Mention, 2001 Catholic Press Association Book Award: Gender Category.
“A Tender View of Conservative Evangelicalism in Higher Ground,” in Protestantism on Screen: Religion, Politics and Aesthetics, Gaston Epinosa et al, eds. (Oxford University Press, Fall 2023).
“Confessional and Couch: E. Boyd Barrett, Priest-Psychoanalyst,” in Kyle B. Roberts and Stephen R. Schloesser, eds. Crossings and Dwellings; Restored Jesuits, Women Religious, American Experience, 1814-2014 (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2017), 409-453.
“St. Homobonus Shepherds the CEOs: Doing good versus Doing (really) well,” in Amanda Porterfield et al, eds., The Business Turn in American Religious History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 199-222.
"Jews and Catholics Converge: 'Song of Bernadette,'" in Catholics in the Movies, edited by Colleen McDannell, Oxford University Press, 2007.
"The Supernatural and Slavery: Catholics, Power, and Oppression," in The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform, edited by Steven Mintz and John Stauffer, University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
"American Catholics at a Crossroads: Review Essay," Religion and American Culture 16.2 (Summer 2006).
"Getting beyond Gothic: Challenges for Contemporary Catholic Church Architecture," in American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces, edited by Louis P. Nelson, Indiana University Press, 2006.
"Marian Devotionalism since 1940: Continuity or Casualty?" in Habits of Devotion: Catholic Religious Practice in Twentieth-Century America, edited by James M. O'Toole, Cornell University Press, 2004.
"'Have We No Language of Our Own?' Boston's Catholic Churches, Architects, and Communal Identity," in Faces of Community: Immigrant Massachusetts, 1860-2000, edited by Reed Ueda and Conrad Edick Wright, Northeastern University Press, 2003.
"'She offered herself up': The Victim Soul and Victim Spirituality in Catholicism," Church History 71.1 (March 2002).
"American Catholic Culture in the Twentieth Century," in Perspectives on American Religion and Culture: A Reader, edited by Peter W. Williams, Blackwell, 1999.
"Is that a Beer Vat Under the Baldochino? From Premodern to Postmodern in Catholic Sacred Architecture," U.S. Catholic Historian 15 (winter 1997)
"Staging a Lie: Boston Irish-Catholicism and the New Irish Drama," in Religion and Irish Identity, edited by Patrick O’Sullivan, Irish World Wide Series 5, Leicester University Press and St. Martin's Press, 1996.