Date: 2010
Type: Thesis
'All for the greater glory of Jesus and the salvation of the immortal souls!' : German missionary nuns in colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897-1960
Florence : European University Institute, 2010, EUI, HEC, PhD Thesis
STORNIG, Katharina, 'All for the greater glory of Jesus and the salvation of the immortal souls!' : German missionary nuns in colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897-1960, Florence : European University Institute, 2010, EUI, HEC, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/14987
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This thesis, a feminist history of mission in the context of gender, has started on the premise to develop an alternative perspective on the missionary encounter rather than the attempt to enrich existing narratives by adding women. Therefore, it mainly draws on the sources that its principal subjects, western missionary nuns, produced. These are mostly correspondence with Europe, travelogues, chronicles, reports and, to a lesser extent, articles, photographs and memoirs, all of which allow us to gain new insights into the nuns’ religious and practical worlds and their gendered dimensions as they moved within and across imperial and religious systems. In addition, it uses colonial records and ecclesiastical sources in order to scrutinize the power relations that structured the nuns’ missionary engagement and their ambiguous roles as enthusiastic missionaries that took their privileged position as 'white Christians' for granted on the one hand and subordinated to male religious and secular power on the other one. Ultimately, theological perspectives are accorded a prominent place because, to borrow from Andrew Porter, missionaries 'viewed their world first of all with the eye of faith and then through theological lenses'.
Additional information:
Defence date: 25 October 2010; Examining Board: Prof. Giulia Calvi (EUI) – Supervisor; Prof. Steve Smith (EUI); Prof. Edith Saurer (Universität Wien); Prof. Rebekka Habermas (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen); PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/14987
Series/Number: EUI; HEC; PhD Thesis
Publisher: European University Institute
LC Subject Heading: Women missionaries; Germany -- Colonies -- Africa; Women missionaries -- Africa -- History
Published version: http://hdl.handle.net/1814/28737