Title Domestic frontiers : gender, reform, and American interventions in the Ottoman Balkans and the Near East / Barbara Reeves-Ellington

Published Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2013]

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks
ProQuest Ebook Central

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xvi, 214 pages) : illustrations Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE Contents Introduction : The Home as the Focus of Women's Civilizing Mission -- Missionary Families and the Contested Concept of Home -- Education, Conversion, and Bulgarian Orthodox Nationalism -- The Mission Press and Bulgarian Domestic Reform -- Unconventional Couples : Gender, Race, and Power in Mission Politics -- The Constantinople Home -- Conclusion Summary During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American Protestant missionaries attempted to export their religious beliefs and cultural ideals to the Ottoman Empire. Seeking to attract Orthodox Christians and even Muslims to their faith, they promoted the paradigm of the “Christian home” as the foundation of national progress. Yet the missionaries’ efforts not only failed to win many converts but also produced some unexpected results. Drawing on a broad range of sources - Ottoman, Bulgarian, Russian, French, and English - the author tracks the transnational history of this little-known episode of American cultural expansion. She shows how issues of gender and race influenced the missionaries’ efforts as well as the complex responses of Ottoman subjects to American intrusions into their everyday lives. Women missionaries - married and single - employed the language of Christian domesticity and female moral authority to challenge the male-dominated hierarchy of missionary society and to forge bonds of feminist internationalism. At the same time, Orthodox Christians adapted the missionaries’ ideology to their own purposes in developing a new strain of nationalism that undermined Ottoman efforts to stem growing sectarianism within their empire. By the beginning of the twentieth century, as some missionaries began to promote international understanding rather than Protestantism, they also paved the way for future expansion of American political and commercial interests Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-203) and index Notes English Print version record Subject Home -- Political aspects -- Turkey -- History Home -- Political aspects -- Balkan Peninsula -- History Sex role -- Religious aspects -- Christianity -- History Protestant churches -- Missions -- History Missions, American -- Turkey -- History Missions, American -- Balkan Peninsula -- History Women missionaries -- Turkey -- History Women missionaries -- Balkan Peninsula -- History SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General. Missions, American Protestant churches -- Missions Race relations Sex role -- Religious aspects -- Christianity Women missionaries SUBJECT Turkey -- Race relations -- History Balkan Peninsula -- Race relations -- History Subject Balkan Peninsula Turkey Genre/Form History Form Electronic book LC no. 2012031200 ISBN 9781613762233 1613762232

  Permalink