Cassandra L. Yacovazzi

University of South Florida, History, Faculty Member

University of Missouri Columbia, History, Alumna

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I research the intersection of gender, popular culture, and religion in America. My book, "Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America," (Oxford UP 2018) explored opposition to nuns expressed through popular print culture, violence, and politics, revealing how that opposition was rooted not only in anti-Catholicism but suspicion of women who did not conform to female gender norms.

My current book project (under contract with Columbia University Press) explores Mary Kay--the woman and the cosmetics empire. I am examining Mary Kay's story, the history women and work, and the relationship between religion, capitalism, and gender in the US.

I have taught a number of American History courses, including American History to 1865, American History from 1865, Utopian Experiments in America, Religion in American History, Women and American Government, American Women I & II, Research and Methods in History, American History through Literature, the Age of Jackson, Disability and Mental Health History in the US, and a graduate seminar on Women and Work in the US.

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Andrea Peto

Central European University

Cristiana Facchini

Università di Bologna

Sergio Botta

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma

James S Bielo

Northwestern University

Kathleen Flake

University of Virginia

Beverly Haviland

Brown University

B. Alex Beasley

The University of Texas at Austin

Stephen Whittle

Manchester Metropolitan University

Jonathan Hall

Uppsala University

Jeanne Cortiel

University Of Bayreuth, Germany

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Papers by Cassandra L. Yacovazzi

The Popery Panic

Routledge eBooks, May 23, 2023

Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America

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‘Down with the Convent!’: Anti-Catholicism and Opposition to Nuns in Antebellum America

Review of Four Steeples Over the City Streets: Religion and Society in New York’s Early Republic Congregations by Kyle T. Bulthuis

Reviewed Work: Religion and the Public Conscience. Ecumenical Civil Rights Work in Seattle, 1940-1960 by Randi Jones Walker

Rome in America: Reflections on the 2014 Rome Seminar

The Author’s Corner with Cassie Yacovazzi

Burning Babylon

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

The burning of Mount Benedict in Charlestown, Massachusetts, was one of the worst acts of nativis... more The burning of Mount Benedict in Charlestown, Massachusetts, was one of the worst acts of nativist violence in American history. On August 11, 1834, a group of men attacked the convent as nuns and female pupils scrambled to safety. The rioters torched the building, inflicting over $50,000 worth of damages that were never repaid. Although a small group of men attacked Mount Benedict, sermons and speeches given prior to the event, the firemen’s neglect to intervene, and the acquittal of the rioters point to a larger conspiracy. The first convent narrative appeared two years before the burning along with other anti-Catholic materials. These works reinforced the conviction that nuns were dangerous women, in need of rescue or retribution. In this chapter I describe the burning of Mount Benedict in the context of the gendered critique of nuns and the birth of the convent narrative.

Uncle Tom and Sister Maria

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

The two best-selling books in the US before the Civil War were Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Awful Disclo... more The two best-selling books in the US before the Civil War were Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery. On the surface, these two could not be more unalike. Stowe’s work dramatized the moral arguments of abolitionism, changing hearts and minds about slavery, while Monk’s book offered sensational anti-Catholicism. Yet the two works were stories of their age, each focusing primarily on female sexual purity, marriage, and the family. Abolition and anticonvent literature shocked readers with descriptions of rape, torn-apart marriages, and mother–child separations. Depictions of the “erotic South” and “priests’ brothels for women” (convents) contrasted with the era’s vision of “true womanhood,” companionate marriage, and happy homes. This chapter explores how abolitionists and convent opponents advanced their movements by presenting slavery and convents as a threat to womanhood and the family, revealing how these domestic ideals shaped some of the era’s most sig...

Awful Disclosures of Mormonism

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

Anti-Catholicism flourished alongside anti-Mormonism. Opposition to Mormonism largely focused on ... more Anti-Catholicism flourished alongside anti-Mormonism. Opposition to Mormonism largely focused on polygamy, something Protestant Americans felt threatened female sexual purity, traditional marriage, and the family. Just as convent narratives warned of the deception used to lure women into the cloister, Mormon captivity narratives detailed the deceptive ways Latter-day Saints enticed young, vulnerable women into the church and polygamous marriages. Awful Disclosures of Mormonism, a book that blatantly borrowed its title from Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, described a young woman’s seduction by a charming Mormon man before being trapped in a miserable plural marriage. These and other Mormon captivity narratives presented polygamy as a threat to the purity and utility of a woman. This chapter examines the similarities among Mormon and convent captivity narratives, analyzing the way both focused on the alleged threats to female sexual purity, marriage, and the family.

Elizabeth Seton: American Saint, by Catherine O’Donnell, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2018, xiv + 508 pp., US$36.95 (hardback), ISBN 978 1 5017 260 26

Religion, 2019

This book is an original, knowledgeable, and important addition to the growing number of book-len... more This book is an original, knowledgeable, and important addition to the growing number of book-length studies on the history of African Americans in twentiethcentury Africa. Moreover, it is a welcome contribution to the expanding body of historical scholarship on United States-Africa interactions and relations. Prior to 1965, Africa was a low priority in U.S. foreign policy, but this carefully researched, compellingly argued, and well-written book breaks new ground in our understanding of African American military contributions to the making of modern Liberia. Shellum reconstructs the military service of seventeen African American Regular Army Officers in training, reorganizing, and leading the Liberian Frontier Force between 1910 and 1942, and his volume enriches the available comparative data concerning the military history of Africa and the United States. The relationship between Liberia and the United States is one of the most important subjects of study within transatlantic history, and, in this work, the author examines previously overlooked actors and events in constructing a fresh narrative about this transatlantic intersection. Furthermore, the book offers important new insights into United States military history by detailing African American military professionalism, leadership, and perseverance in extremely challenging overseas assignments, as was the case with Liberia. Furthermore, it expands upon previously published multidisciplinary works on the challenging black experience in the United States. One of the strengths of the volume is that Shellum draws on previously unexplored archival records and photographs to make a compelling case for the contributions of these African American soldiers to the development of modern Liberia. Furthermore, his biographical sketches of the African American soldiers who served in Liberia greatly enhance the historical value of the study. In illuminating the case of African American soldiers in Liberia, this book makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history of people of African descent both within the diaspora and in Africa itself. In doing so, the author broadens our understanding of the complexities, cooperation, and contradictions among US-based African Americans, African American returnees to West Africa, and indigenous Africans. As such, the author recounts major aspects of Liberian history, including the slave trade, local resistance to Americo-Liberians, Firestone investments, the country's participation in the First and Second World Wars, the roots of the bloody civil war, and postwar efforts to rebuild the country's political institutions through democratic elections. The study could, however, have benefited from a more nuanced discussion of relations between the African American soldiers, Americo-Liberians, and indigenous groups such as the Kru, Bassa, Mano, Gola, Krahn, and Kissi. Tribalism, ethnocentrism, parochial loyalty, and the pronounced tendency to exalt one group of Liberians are all central to understanding the evolving Liberian landscape. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the book is deserving of a wide readership. Military history specialists, historians in general, students, and the general public interested in the histories of Liberia, African Americans, or the African diaspora will find this book most useful.

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The crisis of sectarianism: Restorationist, Catholic, and Mormon converts in antebellum America

The antebellum era is often portrayed a time of religious flourishing, when the state got along w... more

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The Nunnery Sleuths

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

In 1854, a group of Know Nothing legislators in Massachusetts searched two convent schools. Findi... more In 1854, a group of Know Nothing legislators in Massachusetts searched two convent schools. Finding no incriminating evidence, the lot retired to a local hotel for dinner and drinks. Public outcry halted further investigations. Charles Hale of the Daily Advertiser accused the Nunnery Committee of conducting an “unwarranted search” into the “homes” of women. The investigative trial that ensued found the nunnery sleuths guilty of breaking the state’s temperance law and worse. The Nunnery Committee became an embarrassing blunder in the Know Nothing tenure in Massachusetts. Yet the legislators were merely responding to repeated demands to investigate convents. A best-selling convent narrative from the 1850s, The Escaped Nun, called on states to “search!” convents. By this time, opposition to convents had become incorporated into the nativist agenda to “keep America American.” This chapter examines the Know Nothing convent investigations, the trials that followed, and the gendered aspect...

“Down with the Convent!”

A Companion to American Religious History, 2021

Hidden Dangers

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

By the late 1840s, a new genre of literature revealed deep concerns with corruption in the growin... more By the late 1840s, a new genre of literature revealed deep concerns with corruption in the growing urban centers. City mysteries exposed a dark underworld of the metropolis, leading readers through smoky saloons, gambling dens, and brothels. More than any other “sin of the city,” urban gothic literature focused on prostitution. The female prostitute embodied the greatest antithesis to the ideal or “true” woman. Anticonvent literature often compared nuns to prostitutes, convents to brothels, priests to seducers, and Mother Superiors to madams. City mysteries mirrored convent narratives in their description of women being seduced into lives of misery and sexual deviance. Both convent narratives and city mysteries promised to unveil a hidden world of sin and debauchery for an eager readership. This chapter compares convent tales and city mysteries, focusing on the nun-prostitute figure and the ways in which this female archetype threatened nineteenth-century female gender norms.

The Popery Panic

Routledge eBooks, May 23, 2023

Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America

Download

‘Down with the Convent!’: Anti-Catholicism and Opposition to Nuns in Antebellum America

Review of Four Steeples Over the City Streets: Religion and Society in New York’s Early Republic Congregations by Kyle T. Bulthuis

Reviewed Work: Religion and the Public Conscience. Ecumenical Civil Rights Work in Seattle, 1940-1960 by Randi Jones Walker

Rome in America: Reflections on the 2014 Rome Seminar

The Author’s Corner with Cassie Yacovazzi

Burning Babylon

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018