Amy Koehlinger of Religion wins Eric Hoffer Prize for her book ‘The New Nuns’

Amy Koehlinger, an associate professor in the Department of Religion, has won the 2009 Eric Hoffer Prize in the Culture Category for her book The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s.

According to the Hoffer Award website, the award “exists as a platform to honor independent books of exceptional merit.” In announcing the results of the awards, the US Review of Books: The Eric Hoffer Award describes Koehlinger’s winning book as “a mosaic of written and spoken narratives, archival research, and insightful analysis of the logic that fueled the work of the ‘New Nuns’ – the Caucasian sisters who crossed geographic, religious, and racial lines to address the basic human needs of African Americans in a decade fraught with racial prejudice and injustice.” In a review of the book, Neil Young of Princeton University, says, “Amy Koehlinger’s work is a deeply researched and beautifully written account of a transformative moment in American Catholicism.”

To read the full review, go to http://jsr.fsu.edu/Volume11/Young.htm