Negotiating Palestinian Womanhood: Encounters between Palestinian Women and American Missionaries, 1880s1940s

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Description

Negotiating Palestinian Womanhood: Encounters between Palestinian Women and American Missionaries, 1880s1940s is the first analytical study to examine the American Quaker educational enterprise in Palestine since its establishment in the late nineteenth century during the Ottoman rule and into the British Mandate period. This book uses the Friends Girls School as a site of interaction between Arab and American cultures to uncover how Quaker education was received, translated, internalized, and responded to by Palestinian students in order to change their position within their societys structural power relations. It examines the influence of Quaker education on Palestinian womens views of gender and nationalism. Quaker education, in addition to ongoing social and political transformations, produced mixed results in which many Palestinian women showed emancipatory desires to change their roles and responsibilities in either radical, moderate, or conservative ways. As many of their writings in the 1920s and 1930s illustrate, Quaker ideals of internationalism, peace, and nonviolent means in conflict resolution influenced the students advocacy for cultural nationalism, Arab unity across tribal and religious lines, and responsible citizenship.

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Focusing on the American Friends Girls School in Ramallah, Enaya Hammad Othman carefully shows the complexities of the encounter between Quaker missionaries and their students. The voices of the Palestinian women, and the ways in which they reshape an evangelical message that pushed domesticity, non-violence, and public service, come across loud and clear. Sensitive to the nuances of the cultural cross-fertilization at play and the colonial backdrop, Negotiating Palestinian Womanhood demonstrates the importance of probing the history of missionary forays in the Middle East. -- Beth Baron, City University of New York (CUNY)

Author Bio

Enaya Hammad Othman is assistant professor of Arabic language and cultural studies at Marquette University.