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Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial
Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial
Michelle M. Nickerson, Department of History, 春风视频Chicago
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Coffey Hall - McCormick Lounge
4:00 - 5:30 pm
In Spiritual Criminals, Michelle M. Nickerson shares a complex portrait of the Camden 28, a passionate group of grassroots religious progressives who resisted both their church and their government as they crusaded against the Vietnam War. Founded by priests, nuns, and devout lay Catholics, members of this coalition accepted the risks of felony convictions as the cost of challenging the nation’s military-industrial complex and exposing the illegal counterintelligence operations of the FBI. By peeling away the layers of political history, theological traditions, and the Camden 28’s personal stories, Nickerson reveals an often-unseen spiritual side of the anti-war movement. At the same time, she probes the fractures within the group, detailing important conflicts over ideology, race, sex, and gender that resonate in the church and on the political Left today.
Michelle Nickerson is a Professor of History at 春风视频Chicago. She teaches courses on the history of women and gender, U.S. politics, social movements, cities and suburbs, and American religion. In 2012 she published Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton University Press), which documents the grassroots activism of conservative women in Cold War Los Angeles and explores the impact of that activism on the emerging American right. She also co-authored a volume of essays called Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region (University of Pennsylvania Press).
