Workshop: Education in Lebanon during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries…
March 29th, 2012
Workshop: Education in Lebanon during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Catalyst for Multiple Modernities?
Orient Insitute Beirut: 19-21 April 2012
International Workshop http://www.orient-institut.org/English/EventsDetails.aspx?pageid=1864
Sponsor: Fritz Thyssen Foundation University of Göttingen German Historical Institute London Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz, Orient Institue Beirut
Deadline: 19 April 2012
Registration required? Not applicable
Conveners: Julia Hauser (University of Göttingen/Germany), Valeska Huber (German Historical Institute London/UK), Christine Lindner (University of Balamand/Lebanon), Esther Möller (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz/Germany)
The aim of this workshop is the comparative analysis of the large number of local and foreign educational institutions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Lebanon. From the nineteenth century on, Lebanon was characterized by an exceptionally dense concentration of different educational institutions. Here, Western ‘civilizing missions’ and local visions stood in a complex mutual relation of transfer, rejection, and appropriation. While Western missionary schools were based on the assumption of cultural superiority and were often used as tools of strategic influence by their respective states, Lebanese society appropriated the schools to acquire new forms of cultural capital. In due course, different religious groups consciously developed, employed as well as contested, alternative visions to ‘Western’ concepts of education, which were themselves multivalent in motive and expression. Western establishments, on the other hand, often felt threatened by the emergence of local projects. Focusing on material culture, gender, class and religion and applying a comparative perspective on institutions that have often been studied in isolation, the workshop aims to foster debate between junior and senior researchers in the field from European, American and Middle Eastern institutions.
Keynote Lecture: Benjamine Fortna (SOAS, UK) “Out of Empire: Education and Change in the Late Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Periods” http://www.orient-institut.org/English/EventsDetails.aspx?pageid=1875
Closing Discussion: Ussama Makdisi (Rice University, USA)
Workshop Participants: Maria Abunnasr, Nadya Bou Ali, May Davie, Michael Davie, Abdellatif Fakhuri, Ellen Fleischmann, Julia Hauser, Marilène Karam, Butrus Labaki, Catherine Lethomas, Christine Lindner, Esther Möller, Maghda Nammour, Jamila Qusti, Christian Sassmannshausen,
Nadya Sbati, Souad Slim
Contact(s) for more information: Esther Möller
Submission: Christine Lindner (Organiser), 29.3.2012
