European scholarship on Islam grew rapidly during the course of the nineteenth century, particularly in the German-speaking academic world. Imperial politics led to the acquisition of manuscripts and facilitated travel to the East by students and scholars. The scholarship on Islam was affected by the imperial political framework, as Edward Said has argued, and also by theological interests and philological methods, as Suzanne Marchand has demonstrated.

The purpose of this conference is to investigate the reception by Muslim scholars in India, Egypt, and Palestine of European scholarship on Islam, and to interrogate the impact of travel to India and the Mashriq on the nature of the scholarship produced by Europeans. Establishing personal relationships, experiencing Islam as a practiced religion, examining archeological sites and artifacts as well as manuscripts, learning about Islam from Muslims, and refining linguistic abilities were some of the many experiences for the Europeans that emerged from their travel. The interactions were multi-confessional, as Jews as well as Christians were among the European scholars who traveled East, and also among those in the East who met their European counterparts.

The broader intellectual, political, and scholarly frameworks within India, Egypt, and Palestine that shaped the reception of the European interventions has received little attention to date and will be the primary focus of the conference. Papers will examine selected educational institutions, including the universities of al-Azhar, Aligarh, Punjab, and Jerusalem, and the time frame will range from the mid-nineteenth century to the years prior to World War II.

Sponsored by: the Jewish Studies Program, The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, The Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Program, and the Leslie Center for the Humanities

See more at: http://jewish.dartmouth.edu/news/jewish-studies-conference-november-14-and-15-2015-reception-european-orientalism-east-scholarly#sthash.4YcrAWNZ.dpuf