Professor Kathleen McCourt, Circa Early 1990s; Professor Gilda Parrella, 1993; Professor William French, 2018; Professor Prudence Moylan, 1998.
Jail was high on the agenda of the 1973 Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) annual meeting. This time the jail and prisoners under discussion were some of their own. Sister Carol Frances Jegen and six other BVM sisters were imprisoned in California for their protests in support of the United Farm Workers. Sister Carol, who had been scheduled to speak for the meeting, sent her regrets along with this declaration,
"...we’re staying in jail. We came here to do this. We’re with the farm workers. We’re not saying, ok, now we’ll go back to Dubuque and have real lives..."
A decade later, Sister Carol Frances Jegen brought that same personal commitment to justice and wedded it to a scholarly commitment to peace by participating in the founding of the Mundelein College Peace Studies program.
Exhibit Description
The Peace Studies Origins: From Mundelein College to Loyola University Chicago digital exhibit documents the story of Mundelein College’s Peace Studies program and how the program became an interdisciplinary minor at Loyola University Chicago, when Mundelein College affiliated with Loyola in 1991. Funding for this oral history project came from Professor Kathleen Maas Weigert, the first Carolyn Farrell, BVM, Professor in Women and Leadership, through the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership at Loyola University Chicago. She now serves as a professor of Sociology at the university. Professor Maas Weigert partnered with the Women and Leadership Archives (WLA) for the project as the WLA holds the records of Mundelein College and their Peace Studies program.
In 2015, award-winning videographer Kathleen Ermitage conducted oral interviews with Professors William French, Kathleen McCourt, Gilda Parrella, and Prudence Moylan. The interviews are archived in the WLA and available for research and study.
This web project presents the story of how Loyola University Chicago came to have a Peace Studies program, the origins of which are from Mundelein College.
Navigating the Exhibit
Mundelein College Logo
The tabs at the top of this site center on the creation of the Peace Studies program as part of Mundelein College’s affiliation with Loyola University Chicago. About provides a brief background on the history of Peace Studies and the transition. Interviews allows for an opportunity to listen, as well as read, each of the four oral histories. More Information includes indexes, contact, credits, and a link to the current Peace Studies program.
About the Exhibit
The Peace Studies Origins: From Mundelein College to Loyola University Chicago digital exhibit was created by Nathan Ellstrand and Janette Clay, PhD Students in History, on behalf of the Women and Leadership Archives (WLA) at Loyola University Chicago. Special thanks goes to WLA director Nancy Freeman and Sociology Professor and Peace Studies scholar, Dr. Kathleen Maas Weigert. Additional thanks go to WLA Assistant Archivist and Programming Librarian Laura Berfield, Kathleen Ermitage, William French, PhD, Kathleen McCourt, PhD, and Prudence Moylan, PhD, Gilda Parrella, PhD. Technical support was provided by Steffen Scharmacher, MS, Computer Science, Humboldt University.