In the last 10 years or so, more and more
attention has come to be focused upon the complex history of missionary work in the Middle East. Much of this work has
sought to move beyond past binaries which presented missionaries either
as altruistic agents of positivism, or as an imperialist vanguard. This
more nuanced reading of missionaries derives from a concerted effort to
explore the multi-dimensional relationship between missionaries and
indigenous populations. Thus, new work on social welfare, education,
medicine, printing press, gender roles, social institutions and values,
nature of faith and institutionalized religion, and the rise of
indigenous middle classes (among other topics) has come to the fore.
Given the breadth and depth of this new scholarly endeavor we are
organizing a conference on missionaries in the Middle East. The purpose
of the conference is threefold:
- Assess the current state of the
field by inviting the scholars working on the widest variety of
topics within the field in terms of time period, place and theme.
- Initiate an intellectual dialogue
that would clearly articulate existing research questions and frame
new ones.
- Collect the original papers
presented at the conference in an edited volume to be published by a
university press.
The conference--Beyond Colonial
Encounters--will be held at North Carolina State University on
May 4 & 5, 2007. It is sponsored by the Middle East Studies
program and the Department of History. It will bring together scholars of the Middle East to explore the
multi-faceted nature of the missionary project, and to examine how that project was shaped by local responses,
even as it sought to mould individuals and communities.
In the remainder of this website you
will find information (updated frequently) on the program of the
conference, registration information, biographies of the panelists, the
collection of papers (password protected to restrict access only to
participants), and information about contacting the organizers, travel
and accommodation (all under "Contact Us").
We look forward to your participation,
and to a fruitful intellectual encounter.
Akram Khater-NCSU
Ellen Fleischmann-University of Dayton
Beth Baron-CUNY, MEMEAC
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