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In much of recent research on missions and colonialism, the notion of a civilizing mission has served to highlight asymmetries of power in colonial encounters. Drawing on the example of the school and orphanage run by German Protestant deaconesses in late Ottoman Beirut, this article questions these perspectives, arguing that an analysis focused on the criterion of discipline fails to seize the profoundly reciprocal character of missionary encounters. Missionaries were doubtlessly involved in bringing about global cultural transformations, but they were not omnipotent. This article offers a novel perspective on the study of missions, showing that local agency as well as the dynamics of the larger field turned the missionary encounter into a conflictual process of negotiation starkly at odds with the idea of a unidirectional civilizing mission.
Jadaliyya
Julia Hauser, German Religious Women in Late Ottoman Beirut: Competing Missions (New Texts Out Now)2018 •
A brief piece on my first monograph.
Gender, religion and change in the …
Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Middle Eastern Women: An Overview2005 •
International Review of Social History
Education, Labour, and Discipline: New Perspectives on Imperial Practices and Indigenous Children in Colonial Asia2020 •
This article provides an introduction to the two articles in this Special Theme on education, labour, and discipline in colonial Asia. It offers a brief historiography of education to indigenous children in the colonial context provided by non-state as well as state actors. We argue that while many studies have separated the motives behind, and actions of, these different actors in relation to education and “civilizing missions”, it is worthwhile connecting these histories. Moreover, apart from looking at motives, the articles in this Special Theme aim to show the value of studying educational practices in a colonial context. Finally, this introduction identifies several opportunities for future – comparative as well as transnational – studies into the topic of education, child labour, and discipline.
Entangled Education: Foreign and Local Schools in Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon (19th-20th centuries)
Julia Hauser, Christine B. Lindner and Esther Möller, "Introduction," Entangled Education: Foreign and Local Schools in Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon (19th-20th centuries), with "Foreword" by Ellen FleischmannLate Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon were characterized by an exceptionally dense concentration of diverse educational institutions. Research on education in Bilad al-Sham during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has hithterto focused on individual institutions or movements. Stemming from an international workshop held at the Orient Institute of Beirut in April 2012, this volume challenges the established narrative by presenting twelve innovative studies of local and foreign schools that emphasize the entanglements of individuals, concepts and practices. Situated within the field of transnational history, the chapters of this volume illuminate the manifold conversations that entwined students, teachers and the public in debates over how to create a modern Arab society and the role of education within. Julia Hauser, Christine B. Lindner and Esther Möller, eds., Entangled Education: Foreign and Local Schools in Ottoman Syria and Mandate Lebanon (19th-20th centuries), Beiruter Texte und Studien (BTS) | 137, (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2016), ISBN 978-3-95650-101-2
Islam and Christian Muslim Relations
“‘Our Moslem Sisters': Women of Greater Syria in the Eyes of American Protestant Missionary Women”1998 •
This thesis examines the work of the missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and the rise of a Protestant community in Ottoman Syria, from the commencement of the missionary station at Beirut in 1823, to the dissolution of the community in 1860. The primary goals of this thesis are to investigate the history of this missionary encounter and the culture of the new community. This analysis is guided by the theoretical framework of Practice Theory and employs gender as a lens to explore the development of the Protestant identity. It argues that the Protestant community in Ottoman Syria emerged within the expanding port-city of Beirut and was situated within both the American and Ottoman historical contexts. The social structures that defined this community reflect the centrality of the ABCFM missionaries within the community and reveals a latent hierarchy based upon racial difference. However, tensions within the community and subversions to the missionaries’ definition of Protestantism persisted throughout the period under review, which eventually led to the fragmentation of the community in 1860. The contribution of this thesis lies in its investigation onto the activities of women and their delineation of Protestant womanhood and motherhood, as an important manifestation of Protestant culture. This work demonstrates the centrality of women to the development of the Protestant community in Ottoman Syria and reveals the complex interpersonal relationships that defined this missionary encounter.
International Journal of Middle East Studies
MUSCULAR MUSLIMS: SCOUTING IN LATE COLONIAL ALGERIA BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND RELIGION2019 •
The Islamic reformist movement in Algeria is often seen as a precursor to the independence movement , in which religion was supposedly integrated into nationalist identity politics. Focusing on the Muslim scout movements between the 1930s and 1950s, this article challenges this view by arguing that Islam continued to play a role beyond that of an identitarian marker. Influenced by Christian youth movements, the Muslim scouts developed ideas of a "muscular Islam" that remained central even after the movement split in two-one association close to the major nationalist party and another linked to the reformists.
Gender & History
“Christian Marriage Between Tradition and Modernity: Catholic and Protestant Women and Marriage Education in Late Colonial Cameroon, 1939-19602017 •
Journal of Law and Religion
Establishing filiation (nasab) and the placement of destitute children into new families: what role does the state play?2019 •
Middle Eastern Studies
Children in war time: the first pupils of the Syrian (Schneller) orphanage in Jerusalem 1860-18632019 •
2015 •
Social Sciences and Missions
Scandinavian Missionaries, Gender and Armenian Refugees during World War I. Crisis and Reshaping of Vocation2010 •
Transnational and Historical Perspectives on Global Health, Welfare and Humanitarianism
“At Home in the World: Globalizing Domesticity Through Home Economics in the Interwar Years"2013 •
Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture
"All Our Children May be Taught of God": Sunday Schools and the Roles of Childhood and Youth in Creating Evangelical Benevolence2018 •
New Perspectives on Turkey
Fight over 'Nobody's Children': Religion, Nationality, and Citizenship of Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire2009 •
Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia
Incorporation and differentiation: Popular education and the imperial civilizing mission in early nineteenth century IndiaIslam and Christian-Muslim Relations
The impact of early missionary enterprises on landscape and identity formation in Palestine, 1820-19142004 •
Middle Eastern Studies
Failed Proselytizers or Modernizers?: Protestant Missionaries among the Jews and Sabbateans/Dönmes in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Empire [Middle Eastern Studies, 2015]2014 •
International Journal of Middle East Studies
Taste and Class in Late Ottoman Beirut2011 •
TURCICA
'Being Saved to Serve': Armenian Orphans of 1894-96 and Interested Relief in Missionary Orphanages2010 •
Journal of American Studies
American Missionaries and the Harem: Cultural Exchanges behind the Scenes2011 •
Social Sciences and Missions
"Lost in Translation: Home Economics and the Sidon Girls' School of Lebanon, c. 1924-1932"2010 •
2017 •
Journal of American Studies
The Global Conscience of American Evangelicalism: Internationalism and Social Concern in the 1970s and Beyond2017 •