In Pursuing Truth, Mary J. Oates explores the roles that religious women played in teaching generations of college and university students amidst slow societal change that brought the grudging acceptance of Catholics in public life. Across the twentieth century, Catholic women's colleges modeled themselves on and sometimes positioned themselves against elite secular colleges. Oates describes these critical pedagogical practices by focusing on Notre Dame of Maryland University, formerly known as Notre Dame of Maryland-the first Catholic college in America to award female students four-year degrees.

The sisters and lay women on the faculty and administration of Notre Dame of Maryland persevered in their work while facing challenges from the establishment of the Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches, and secular institutions. Pursuing Truth presents the stories of female founders, administrators, and professors whose labors led the institution through phases of diversification. The pattern of institutional development regarding the place of religious identity, gender and sexuality, and race that Oates finds at Notre Dame of Maryland is a paradigmatic story of change in American higher education. Similarly representative is her account of the college's effort, from the late 1960s to the present, to maintain its identity as a women's liberal arts college.