What happens when a community of Catholic sisters challenges church hierarchy and reshapes religious life in Los Angeles? How did the city’s punk rock scene, avant-garde art, and countercultural currents find their way into the pages of mainstream journalism? Two new archival collections at the USC Libraries—the Anita M. Caspary papers and Kristine McKenna papers—offer fresh insights into Southern California’s religious, cultural, and artistic life over the past century.
The first collection documents a pivotal moment in American Catholic history through the life and work of a remarkable religious leader.
Anita Caspary (1915–2011) was a nun, educator, scholar, and activist who fundamentally reshaped American Catholic life through her leadership of one of the most significant religious reform movements in the nation's history. After earning her PhD in English from Stanford in 1948, Caspary became a noted literary scholar and rose through the academic ranks at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, ultimately serving as its president from 1958 to 1963. Under her leadership, the college gained national recognition for its innovative methods and progressive approach to Catholic education.
Her election in 1963 as mother general of the Immaculate Heart Sisters placed her at the center of transformative change within American Catholicism. Founded in 1848 and established in Los Angeles in 1886, the Immaculate Heart Sisters were a teaching congregation dedicated to education and social service. As their leader, Caspary would guide the community through reforms that challenged traditional practices, ultimately leading to the group’s historic breach with the Catholic Church.
In the tumultuous years following Vatican II, the landmark church council that called for renewal and greater engagement with the modern world, Caspary promoted education for the sisters, initiated shared decision-making, and encouraged the adoption of modern dress and expanded prayer practices. These reforms brought her into direct conflict with Cardinal James Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles. After years of struggle involving Vatican intervention, the sisters were confronted with an ultimatum: abandon their renewal process or accept dispensation from their vows. Under Caspary’s leadership, more than 300 chose the latter. In 1970, even as many remained faithful Catholics, the sisters reorganized themselves as the Immaculate Heart Community, an ecumenical group that welcomed women and men—religious and lay, Catholic and non-Catholic—committed to shared spiritual life and social justice. This groundbreaking decision earned Caspary a cover story in Time magazine, recognizing her leadership in the Catholic feminist movement and her unique status as both the last mother general of a Catholic congregation and the first president of an ecumenical community.
The Anita M. Caspary papers, a gift of Susan Maloney, PhD, trustee of the Anita M. Caspary Trust, span more than a century, from the 1880s through 2013, and offer unparalleled documentation of this transformative period in American religious life. Highlights include extensive correspondence, writings and speeches, records of the renewal process of the late 1960s, and audio recordings of Caspary’s lectures. Photographic materials and scrapbooks capture both family life and community milestones, while the papers of student and friend Marilyn Thomas offer additional perspective on Caspary’s influence as educator and mentor.
While Caspary's story illuminates the transformation of American religious life from within institutional walls, the second newly acquired collection documents cultural change from the perspective of an observer chronicling Los Angeles's creative underground.
Kristine McKenna carved out a unique position in American cultural journalism as a writer whose work bridged the worlds of underground art and mainstream media. Writing for the Los Angeles Times from 1977 to 1998, McKenna was among the first mainstream journalists to recognize and chronicle the city’s emerging punk rock scene. Her extensive interviews with artists and cultural figures—from Leonard Cohen to David Lynch—captured not just individual personalities but the broader cultural currents reshaping American art, music, and film.
Beyond journalism, McKenna co-curated landmark exhibitions such as Forming: the Early Days of L.A. Punk and Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle, and collaborated with David Lynch on the 2018 quasi-memoir Room to Dream. Her collected interviews, published in Book of Changes (2001) and Talk to Her (2004), preserve crucial conversations with artists who defined contemporary American culture.
The Kristine McKenna papers include photographs, recorded interviews, correspondence, exhibition catalogs, and ephemera, revealing McKenna’s methods as an interviewer and cultural observer, and they document her collaborations with figures like Walter Hopps, Charles Brittin, David Lynch, Captain Beefheart, and Richard Prince. In addition to documenting McKenna’s own work, the collection also preserves rare primary sources on the artists and movements she chronicled, offering researchers a vivid record of the creative ferment that defined L.A.’s cultural landscape from the late 20th century onward.
Both collections have been processed and are now available for research by appointment through the USC Libraries’ Special Collections. Finding aids for the Anita M. Caspary papers and Kristine McKenna papers are available online.
All images courtesy of Suzanne Noruschat
