UCLA

Epidemiologists have identified American Catholic nuns as a group that lives longer, healthier, and more actively, experiencing less anxiety, pain, and depression than their lay counterparts. While contributing factors such as education, nutrition, physical activity, optimistic outlook, and spiritual and social support have been identified through surveys and medical examinations, this dissertation is the first to document the everyday, on-the-ground social and sacred communicative practices that may contribute to the quality of life these elderly nuns report. The dissertation is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a Midwestern Catholic convent where the elderly nuns report above-average quality of life. The dissertation identifies how a suite of institutional and communicative practices may contribute to the nuns' sense of well-being, including how their prayers are composed to garner assistance for peers in distress and how care provided by the elderly nuns themselves offers a sense of purpose to both the caregiver and recipient of care.

The dissertation focuses on care interactions in the convent infirmary, examining how the nuns integrate the divine into their everyday interactions, how they imbue everyday care interactions with spiritual meaning, and how these care interactions may contribute to the nuns' aging process by providing an enriched form of support. The dissertation blends a phenomenological approach to embodiment with linguistic analysis of prayer practices, care interactions, and institutional kenotic practices to show how they may shape the nuns' experiences of illness, aging, and death. As a whole, the dissertation offers ethnographic insight into the everyday lives of elderly Catholic nuns in a convent infirmary, documenting the ways in which these nuns understand and experience well-being at the end of life.