‘The Flexibility of Home: Investigating the Spaces and Definitions for the Home and Family Employed by the ABCFM Missionaries in Ottoman Syria from 1823 to 1860’

Presented at the Christian Missionaries in the Middle East: Rethinking Colonial Encounters’ Conference (North Carolina University: May 2007)

Reflecting upon the home created by his recently departed wife Sarah, the ABCFM missionary Eli Smith wrote that ‘[it] was a model for imitation’.  In a similar light, missionaries Isaac Bird and George Whiting asked for a ‘married physician’ to be sent to the Syrian Station, for ‘Christian families’ served as ‘living witnesses’ for the local Syrian population.  In what ways did these missionary homes and Christian families act as examples for the Syrian community, especially for the Syrian Protestants? How were they defined and how did they function as to mark them as Protestant? What made them an essential element of the missionary encounter?

The definitions of ‘home’ and ‘family’ employed by the American Protestant missionaries of the ABCFM, who resided in Beirut and upon Mount Lebanon during the period of 1823 to 1860, resulted from the contexts from which the missionaries encountered Ottoman Syria. The ideologies and theologies manifested in their homes and families reflected the missionaries’ American and Protestant backgrounds, overlapped with the influences of encounters with Syrians, especially Syrian Protestants, and reflected the terms that define this nascent Protestant community. 

This paper examines three aspects of the ABCFM missionaries’ definitions of home and family that developed due to their encounters with Ottoman Syria and in the context of the emergence of this Protestant identity. It  first looks at the selection of locations and houses that served as ‘home’ for the ABCFM missionaries (and many Syrian Protestants), and how these homes were arranged and modified. Such acts resulted from the Protestants’ attempts to forge a new Protestant identity within the Ottoman Syria region, which demanded flexibility, but in a manner as to affirm a specific Protestant ideology and theology. Secondly, this paper  investigates the various definitions and manifestations for ‘family’ that were employed by the Protestants within Syria, particularly within the homes of the American missionaries. A reality of mobility and instability within Protestant families resulted from the shifting alliances that contextualise the emergence of a Protestant identity. ABCFM missionaries were required to maintain alliances with persons back ‘home’ in the United States, while forging new alliances with Syrians and other Protestants at their new ‘home’ in Beirut and upon Mount Lebanon. As a result, those residing within the home and viewed as family extended beyond that of the immediate, nuclear family, to include boarding students, temporary residents and others family units. Lastly, this paper explores the role of the missionary home within missionary endeavour. The missionary’s Protestant home was not a closed, secluded space defined by an isolated, domestic femininity. Rather, this home was an open space for which the Protestant identity emerged and was negotiated, by both the ABCFM missionaries and the Syrian Protestants. In other words, the typology that emerged from the encounters of the ABCFM missionaries in Syria, resulted in a definition of home and the family, which reflected the specificities of this encounter.

‘From Rebecca to the ‘Three Dancing Girls of Egypt’: American Women’s Encounters of Arab Women during the Nineteenth Century’

Presented at the South West/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Annual Meeting (Albuquerque, NM: February 2008)

During the nineteenth century, American women encountered Arab women. Sites of contact were both tangible and imaginary. American women physically visited the Middle East, primarily as travellers and missionaries, while Arab women immigrated to and visited the United States. In addition, books, newspapers, public entertainment as well as fashion, furniture and ‘knick-knacks’ allowed American women to imaginatively interact with Arab women. The number of these engagements, both real and imaginary, expanded as the nineteenth century unfolded. 

My paper explores the nature of these encounters, as it will delineate the changing sites of contact between American women and Arab women. Moreover, I focuses upon how Arab women were perceived within these ‘meetings’. Expanding upon the discourse on Orientalism, I argue that American women’s perceptions  of Arab women marked Arab women as an ‘other’, for they were regarded as ignorant, unclean, sexually immoral and bad mothers. These tropes however underwent transformation as the nineteenth century unfolded. In other words, although points of contact increased between American and Arab women, American women’s  (mis)perceptions of Arab women reflected their own negotiations of racial, gendered and religious identities. As such, following the path of American women’s encounters and perceptions of Arab women, from the Biblical image of Rebecca to the ‘Three Dancing Girls of Egypt’, grants insight unto the shifting terms of the American female identity, and Arab women’s location within it.

‘Historical Perceptions of Muslim Women by American Women’

Presented at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting (Boston, MA: November 2006)

Much has been said about the way that the American media represents Arab and Muslim women. Articles covering Chechnyan Black Widows, converted Belgian suicide bombers, Palestinian Mothers of Martyrs and the war of roses, elicit a fear from middle-class, white Americas, eerily reminiscent of the Lacanian binaries addressed by Said in Orientalism and other works. This racialised ‘othering’ however, is historically contingent upon an ideological system where upon ideas of proper mothering, eschatological positioning and female agency react with the historical events of post 9/11 and the lingering military engagement in Iraq.

My paper contextualises present day “American” representation of Arab and Muslim women within the larger American historical framework. Specifically, I compare these present day representations to those held by Americans during the early to mid 19th century, when the United States first ventured into imperial actions and sent missionaries to the Middle East. It shows that although at times Arab racial identity was perceived as ‘the other’ (as in the present circumstance), during the 19th century the American perception of Muslim identity and Arab womanhood was only just being formatted and followed specific characteristics-such as timeless biblical associations, designation as a ‘half-civilised’ culture, and the lingering hope for both eschatological and cultural reform.

As such, my paper highlights not only some of the historical background to present day white, middle-class American’s perceptions (stereotypes) of Arab and Muslim women, but it will also illuminate the history and complexities of American relations with Muslims from the Arab world.

‘No, No, Don’t Pass the Butter!: Power and Identity in the Protestant Circle in Ottoman Syria, 1820-1860’

Presented at the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Postgraduate Research Seminar (University of Edinburgh: November 2006)

The creation of a Protestant Circle in Ottoman Syria, from 1820 to 1860, developed at the border site linking two larger groups of people, the Americans (through missionaries) and the Syrians (through converts to Protestantism). Although some could argue that the terms that came to define this Protestant Circle and the distributions of power favoured the American missionaries, exploring the details of exchange within this group produces a different view. It is the aim of my paper to illuminate that the construction of the  Protestant Circle’s identity resulted from a dialogue between the American missionaries and the Syrian Protestants. Appropriating the theories of Bourdieu, I show that this dialogue was manifest in the Protestants’ negotiations over food consumption, production and presentation. This paper explores three facets of this dialogue through which, although the Americans desired to strictly regulate the terms for the Protestant Circle (i.e. acceptable and associated foods), the Syrian Protestants actively appropriated, rejected or avoided the Americans food based upon their own preferences and assertions of Protestant identity.

Problematising the “Modern”: An Exploration of the Homes and Families For the American Protestant Missionaries and Syrian Protestants in Ottoman Syria from 1823 to 1860’

Presented at the New Directions in Studies of the Arab World: The First Annual Graduate Workshop (CASAW-University of Edinburgh: September 2007)

For many, the concepts of the ‘modern’ home is an isolated domestic space for women, separated from the public and inhabited by the nuclear family. Within this definition, the ‘modern’ home and family developed in conjunction with imperialism and contrasted the ‘traditional’ home and family found in the colonies and during the pre-modern era (ex. Bourdieu 83-91; 133-53)

My paper questions these assumptions. Through investigating the definitions of home and family created by the American Protestant missionaries and Syrian Protestants from 1823 to 1860, I argue that what has described the ‘modern’ home and family were not present within this ‘colonial’ relationship. Despite being historicised as ‘modern’ (Makdisi 233, 244), the homes of the American missionaries and Syrian Protestants (and the homes they shared), were active spaces created by the demands of this nascent community within the dynamic environment of Ottoman Beirut. As such, Protestant homes were sites for both male and female activities and were externally similar to other ‘Arab’ homes. Their homes’ internal spaces were arranged due to the needs of the community and to house the ‘mosaic’ families. These families were ‘mosaic’ combinations of identifiable family units that were frequently interchanged.

In other words, stripping the ‘modern’ label from this relationship allows one to fully contextualise and historicise this ‘colonial’ relationship within both the Ottoman and American contexts.

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1979). Algeria 1960 (trans. Richard Nice). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Makdisi, Jean Said. (1996). “The Mythology of Modernizing: Women and Democracy in Lebanon”, in: M. Yamani (ed.) Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives. Reading, Garnet Publishing Ltd.

‘Re-examining the Use of Religion as a Term for Identity in Ottoman Syria’

Presented at Christians in the Middle East Workshop (University of Stirling: February 2009)

‘Theorising Autonomy and Stability: Social Systems and Gender in Mid-Nineteenth Century Beirut’

Presented at the European University Institute Mediterranean Programme:  Eighth Mediterranean Research Meeting (Florence and Montecatini Terme, Italy: March 2007)

Recent research on Ottoman port cities has problematised the way social groups have been defined and examined by social theorist, like Pierre Bourdieu. The paradox that groups harnessed existing ideologies fused with the transitory influences of ‘foreign’ ideologies, tends to produce an unease for social theorists.  Grounds for this unease are based upon the assertions that, although social groups are dynamic, there is an essential requirement of stability and autonomy for the creation of hierarchies and norms (Bourdieu: 6). Subversion is theorised as being drawn from these autonomous, stable dynamics within these groups (Bourdieu: 106; Butler: 93, 130).

My paper investigates this unease, by asserting that social groups located within port cities are essentially fluid and permeable. These characteristics allowed agents the capability to harness divergent and new ideologies, while functioning within established (but ever transforming) systems. The transformations within the field of female education operating within the Ottoman Syrian context during the mid-nineteenth century, the emerging port-city of Beirut in particular, will serve as this paper’s example. This review shows how changes in this field and the definition of educational capital granted certain women reflexivity to negotiate the divergent avenues available to them. However, such a review is only possible once the works of social theory, like Bourdieu’s theory of practice, are thoroughly examined and reconfigured to allow for field permeability and relative instability. 

Bourdieu, Pierre.1993.  The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York and London: Routledge.

‘The Use of Evangelical Literature and Revival Narratives by Protestant Women in Ottoman Syria during the Mid-Nineteenth Century’

Presented at the Translating Christianity Colloquium (University of Stirling: May 2008)

This paper looks at the use of Evangelical Literature and revival narratives by Protestant women in Ottoman Syria during the mid-nineteenth century. I first present the history of Arab women’s engagement with American/British Evangelical Literature and revival narratives as part of their encounters with ABCFM Missionaries. This is followed by a discussion onto why Arab Protestant women’s revival narratives have been silenced within history.

‘The Use of Theories and Models in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies’ (Co-authoured with Kifah Hanna)

Presented at the Broadening Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies: IMES Postgraduate Workshop (University of Edinburgh: May 2007)

‘”An Uncommonly Worthy Girl”: Exploring the Life and Influence of Rahil Ata al-Bustani’

Forthcoming (MESA Annual Meeting, Boston, November 2009)

Rahil Ata al-Bustani was a central figure in the early Protestant Church of Ottoman Syria. She was the wife of Butrus al-Bustani and mother of Selim and Alice al-Bustani; all of whom are famous figures in the Nahda of the nineteenth century. Although born into a Greek Orthodox family, Rahil was adopted by the American missionary, Sarah Smith, and spent the rest of her life within this international Protestant community. Through teaching, translating and mothering, Rahil embodied the ideals of mid-nineteenth century Protestant womanhood in Ottoman Syria.

My paper consists of two parts. The first section reviews the biography of Rahil. Despite the significance of this woman, as a central member of the Protestant Church and as the wife/mother of the Bustani family, her history is often overlooked (or wrongly identified) in recent works on the history of Protestantism in Syria. My aim is to re-introduce Rahil to present day scholars and outline the various activities she performed during the early years of this community.

The second section of my paper examines the discoursive role ‘Rahil’ played in defining Protestant/womanhood during the mid to late nineteenth century. In contrast to the recent lack of interest on the historical person, the representational figure of ‘Rahil’ served as a central figure in, or reference for, various travel guides and accounts written by Americans to Ottoman Syria as well as educational and religious treatises by contemporary Syrians, including pieces by Butrus and Selim al-Bustani during the mid to late nineteenth century. I will examine how these different portrayals of ‘Rahil’ reflect, not her own historical path and definition of self, but the gendered and racialised discourses on Protestant womanhood advocated by male authors during this period.