Heather J Sharkey
Biographic Data
| ID | 91803 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heather J Sharkey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Heather J |
| FAMILY NAME | Sharkey |
| SIGNATURE | SHARKEY H J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1847-0639 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 169 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
W.H.T. Gairdner, Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, and the Career of an Anglo-American Textbook, 1917–1953
This article examines the “career” of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic , a book that the British Anglican priest, W.H.T. Gairdner (1873–1928) of the Church Missionary Society ( CMS ), published in Cairo in 1917. Gairdner prepared this volume as a textbook for British and American Protestant missionaries at what became the American University in Cairo although other institutions later assigned it, too. He used the system of the International Phonetic As…
Damascus, Syria, 1860: Clues and Lessons from the Scene of a Crime
In July 1860, a mob tore through two neighborhoods of Damascus and targeted Christians in a rampage of murder, rape, looting, abduction, and arson. Worried that European powers would intervene, and appalled by the violence and destruction, Ottoman authorities set out to restore order, punish perpetrators, placate diplomats, and rebuild the city. More than a century and a half later, these events and the responses to them continue to provoke quest…
The Mission of Social Sciences and Missions
This article assesses the “mission” of the journal Social Sciences and Missions as it approaches its twentieth anniversary, starting from its origins as a forum for interdisciplinary study of colonial-era Christian missions, especially in Africa. It surveys major debates that the journal has followed regarding gender, migration, and more. It reflects on its revised manifesto of 2021, committing to the study of missions as neither a “theological c…
On Christopher Tounsel's Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan
CHOSEN PEOPLES: CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN SOUTH SUDANBy Christopher Tounsel. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 205. Paper, $25.95. In July 2012, Christopher Tounsel was a PhD student doing research at the national archives in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, when the country celebrated independence. Exactly 1 year before, after a referendum that yielded a near-unanimous vote to secede, South Sudan withdrew from the R…
The display of religious identity: Towards a theory of indistinguishability among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the modern Middle East
A conversation between Heather Sharkey and Ariane Sadjed
American Missionaries in Egypt, Gender Relations, and the Professional and Social Formation of Women, 1854–1967
This article considers the impact that the American Presbyterian mission in Egypt (1854–1967) exerted on American and Egyptian women, by expanding career opportunities and roles in church life and promoting new ideas about gender relations, sexuality, and family. It uses American women doctors and Egyptian Bible Women as case studies for female professionalism. Questioning the premise that influence moved one way, from American missionaries towar…
Making an American Superpower: World Vision and U.S. Evangelicals
In 1950, following trips to China and Korea, an American preacher named Bob Pierce founded World Vision, Inc. as an evangelical agency to feed the poor, help orphans, and preach the gospel. In this fascinating and meticulously researched study, David P. King traces World Vision from its “ragtag beginnings” across seventy years (1). King shows how what started as a shoestring operation, driven by the energy and whim of its founder, had become by 2…
Reappraising The History of Arabic Culture in the Sudan by the Egyptian Scholar 'Abd al-Majid 'Abidin
In the aftermath of the fall of the Omar Al-Bechir regime in 2019, the time has come to reappraise the history of Arabic culture in Sudan, and its connection to Sudanese identity and Arab nationalism. To this end, this article considers a brilliant Arabic book that was first published in 1953, three years before Sudanese independence, by ‘Abd al-Majid ‘Abidin, an Egyptian professor in Khartoum. Called Tarikh al-thaqafa al-'arabiyya fi al-Sudan (“…
Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom
History Rhymes? Late Ottoman Millets and Post-Ottoman Minorities in the Middle East
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
A History of Muslims Christians and Jews in the Modern Middle East
Across centuries, the Islamic Middle East hosted large populations of Christians and Jews in addition to Muslims. Today, this diversity is mostly absent. In this book, Heather J. Sharkey examines the history that Muslims, Christians, and Jews once shared against the shifting backdrop of state policies. Focusing on the Ottoman Middle East before World War I, Sharkey offers a vivid and lively analysis of everyday social contacts, dress, music, food…
Les Chrétiens d’Orient
This slim volume offers a magisterial synthesis of the history of Middle Eastern Christians from Christianity’s origins until today. Bernard Heyberger explains theological controversies and sectari
Les Fondations pieuses waqfs chez les chrétiens et les juifs, du moyen âge à nos jours
Endowments known as waqfs historically constituted one of the most important institutions in Islamic societies. Muslims established them to sustain families and to support mosques, schools, orphana
American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xv Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Spelling xvii Chapter 1: The American Missionary Encounter in Egypt 1 Chapter 2: The American Mission, Coptic Reform, and the Making of an Egyptian Evangelical Community, 1854-82 18 Chapter 3: The Colonial Moment of the American Mission, 1882-1918 48 Chapter 4: Egyptian Nationalism, Religious Liberty, and the Rethinking of the American Mission, …
Darfur: Colonial Violence, Sultanic Legacies and Local Politics, 1916–1956, by Chris Vaughan
Flogging, humiliation and extortion contributed to the everyday culture of violence that marked British colonial rule in Darfur. Chris Vaughan builds a persuasive case for this claim while drawing on reports, diaries, memoirs and letters from the British National Archives, the Sudan Archive at Durham University and the National Records Office in Khartoum. He focuses on the four decades after 1916, when British military authorities, with locally-r…
Mover and Shaker: Grace Mary Crowfoot, Intimate Conversations, and Sudanese History
The Rationale for This StudyAt the fourth annual conference of African studies in France (4èmes Rencontres des Études Africaines en France [REAF]), which revolved around the broad theme of “Cosmopolitical Africas” (Afriques cosmopolitiques), several panellists considered “traces of intimacy” in African history regarding individuals and their modes of oral, literary, and artistic expression. Drawing inspiration from many scholars, including Stoler…
Rethinking Sudan Studies: A Post-2011 Manifesto
nThis essay appraises “Sudan Studies” following the 2011 secession of South Sudan. It asks two questions. First, what has Sudan Studies been as a colonial and postcolonial field of academic inquiry and how should or must it change? Second, should we continue to write about a single arena of Sudan Studies now that Sudan has split apart? The authors advance a “manifesto” for Sudan Studies by urging scholars to map out more intellectual terrain by a…
La Belle Africaine: The Sudanese Giraffe who went to France
In 1826, Mehmet Ali of Egypt sent a giraffe from somewhere in what is now the Republic of the Sudan to King Charles X of France. The first live giraffe ever to reach France, she arrived when public museums and zoos were emerging, inspiring scholarly and popular interest in science and the world beyond French borders. This article studies the career and “afterlives” of this giraffe in France and relative to giraffes at large in the Sudan, in order…
American Evangelicals in Egypt
American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire
African Colonial States
This chapter sketches a history of European colonial states in Africa, north and south of the Sahara, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explains when and why colonial states emerged, what they did, how they worked, and who shaped them. Noting discrepancies between the theory and practice of colonial administration, the chapter shows that colonial administration was far more diffuse and less closely coordinated than official discou…
Le Soudan, un pays indivisible, dual ou pluriel: Chronique post-rupture
Bois « sacré » du domaine réservé du chef de l’État sous la V e République, l’Afrique est passée du « secret du roi » incarné par Jacques Foccart aux feux médiatiques des scandales. Ce changement de registre, dont « l’affaire des diamants » constitue l’archétype, a profondément altéré l’interprétation de la politique africaine de la France. Pensée comme le socle du programme d’indépendance nationale imaginée par le général de Gaulle, elle a été r…
Language and Conflict: The Political History of A rabisation in S udan and A lgeria
Upon decolonisation, nationalist leaders in two N orth A frican countries, A lgeria and S udan, promoted a policy called A rabisation ( ta'rib ), which sought to impose standard literary A rabic at the expense of E nglish (in S udan), F rench (in A lgeria), and other local languages (in both places). This language policy reflected the worldview of M uslim leaders, who hoped to break from the colonial past and start afresh while forging alliances …
The British and Foreign Bible Society in Port Said and the Suez Canal
‘All things are for sale in Port Said’, said Madame. Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed (1890) At the beginning of the twentieth century, Port Said was four days from Marseilles ... four days to meet up with this Tower of Babel where Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Maltese, Cypriots, Levantines, Syrians, and Tripolitanians mixed and where they took ocean liners by storm... Valérie Nicolas, Directrice de l'Alliance Française de Port-Saïd, in Marie-L…
American Presbyterians, Freedmen's Missions, and the Nile Valley: Missionary History, Racial Orders, and Church Politics on the World Stage
In the second half of the nineteenth century, American Presbyterian “home” and “foreign” missions developed parallel and mutually reinforcing policies towards freed slaves in Egypt, Sudan, and the U.S.A. as well as towards Egypt's indigenous Christians, the Copts. Yet the racial ideologies and social hierarchies of these three countries reflected distinct historical trajectories of migration and conquest. In the Nile Valley, American missionaries…
Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race
In what is now Sudan there occurred over the centuries a process of ta'rib, or Arabization, entailing the gradual spread of both Arab identity and the Arabic language among northern peoples. After the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of 1898, British colonial policies favoured a narrow elite from within these ‘Arab’ communities. Members of this elite went on to develop a conception of a self-consciously Sudanese Arabic national identity, in the process ad…
American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xv Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Spelling xvii Chapter 1: The American Missionary Encounter in Egypt 1 Chapter 2: The American Mission, Coptic Reform, and the Making of an Egyptian Evangelical Community, 1854-82 18 Chapter 3: The Colonial Moment of the American Mission, 1882-1918 48 Chapter 4: Egyptian Nationalism, Religious Liberty, and the Rethinking of the American Mission, …
American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire
Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
Histories written in the aftermath of empire have often featured conquerors and peasant rebels but have said little about the vast staffs of locally recruited clerks, technicians, teachers, and medics who made colonialism work day-to-day. Even as these workers maintained the colonial state, they dreamed of displacing imperial power. This book examines the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898-1956) and the Republic of Sudan that followed in o…
Christians Among Muslims: The Church Missionary Society in the Northern Sudan
Church Missionary Society missionaries arrived in the northern Sudan in 1899 with the goal of converting Muslims. Restricted by the Anglo-Egyptian government and by local opposition to their evangelism, they gained only one Muslim convert during sixty years of work. The missionaries nevertheless provided medical and education services in urban centers and in the Nuba Mountains, and pioneered girls' schools. Yet few of their Sudanese graduates ach…
Chronicles of Progress: Northern Sudanese Women in the Era of British Imperialism
A Century in Print: Arabic Journalism and Nationalism in Sudan, 1899–1999
In 1999, Sudan's Arabic periodical press observes its hundredth anniversary. A century before, and one year after the collapse of the Mahdist state (1881–98), the Britishdominated “Anglo-Egyptian“ regime (1898–1956) launched an official Arabic-English gazette. Four years later, Lebanese journalists founded the region's first independent Arabic newspaper, catering to an audience of Egyptians and Lebanese employed by the new government. These expat…
Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century
The unification of the Maghrib under the Almohads the spread of civilization in the Maghrib and its impact on Western civilization the disintegration of political unity in the Maghrib society in the Maghrib after the disappearance of the Almohads Mali and the second Mande expansion the decline of the empire of Mali - the 15th to 16th centuries the Songhay from the 12th to the 16th century the peoples and kingdoms of the Niger Bend and the Volta b…
Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State
Language and Conflict: The Political History of A rabisation in S udan and A lgeria
Upon decolonisation, nationalist leaders in two N orth A frican countries, A lgeria and S udan, promoted a policy called A rabisation ( ta'rib ), which sought to impose standard literary A rabic at the expense of E nglish (in S udan), F rench (in A lgeria), and other local languages (in both places). This language policy reflected the worldview of M uslim leaders, who hoped to break from the colonial past and start afresh while forging alliances …
Becoming Walata: A History of Saharan Social Formation and Transformation
The Nile: Histories, Cultures, Myths
Empire and Muslim conversion: Historical reflections on Christian missions in Egypt
This article considers Christian evangelization among Muslims in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and traces its relationship to the global and local dynamics of Western imperialism. Focusing on Egypt, where Anglo-American Protestant missionaries were active, the article examines why missionaries encountered fierce resistance from Muslim audiences despite the small number of Muslim conversions and how they inadvertently galvanized Egyp…
Colonialism, character‐building and the culture of nationalism in the Sudan, 1898–1956
(1998). Colonialism, character‐building and the culture of nationalism in the Sudan, 1898–1956. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 1-26
Politics and Islam in Contemporary Sudan
Why wasn't Islam the rallying point and battle cry of the anti-colonial movement in the Sudan? Why did the mainstream political parties and the first military regime maintain the 'secular' political structures of the colonial state? Why did the influential parties opt for an 'Islamic constitution' in the 1960s? Why did Nimeiry's regime change is course? This work attempts to answer these and related questions. Three key issues are addressed withi…
The display of religious identity: Towards a theory of indistinguishability among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the modern Middle East
A conversation between Heather Sharkey and Ariane Sadjed
History Rhymes? Late Ottoman Millets and Post-Ottoman Minorities in the Middle East
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
La Belle Africaine: The Sudanese Giraffe who went to France
In 1826, Mehmet Ali of Egypt sent a giraffe from somewhere in what is now the Republic of the Sudan to King Charles X of France. The first live giraffe ever to reach France, she arrived when public museums and zoos were emerging, inspiring scholarly and popular interest in science and the world beyond French borders. This article studies the career and “afterlives” of this giraffe in France and relative to giraffes at large in the Sudan, in order…
Le Soudan, un pays indivisible, dual ou pluriel: Chronique post-rupture
Bois « sacré » du domaine réservé du chef de l’État sous la V e République, l’Afrique est passée du « secret du roi » incarné par Jacques Foccart aux feux médiatiques des scandales. Ce changement de registre, dont « l’affaire des diamants » constitue l’archétype, a profondément altéré l’interprétation de la politique africaine de la France. Pensée comme le socle du programme d’indépendance nationale imaginée par le général de Gaulle, elle a été r…
The British and Foreign Bible Society in Port Said and the Suez Canal
‘All things are for sale in Port Said’, said Madame. Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed (1890) At the beginning of the twentieth century, Port Said was four days from Marseilles ... four days to meet up with this Tower of Babel where Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Maltese, Cypriots, Levantines, Syrians, and Tripolitanians mixed and where they took ocean liners by storm... Valérie Nicolas, Directrice de l'Alliance Française de Port-Saïd, in Marie-L…
Middle Eastern Women and the Invisible Economy
These essays examine the struggles and hardships of women in the Middle East, their vital economic activities and their perception of Islam. They also look at the female-centred informal economy and its importance in the lives of Middle Eastern women
The Mission of Social Sciences and Missions
This article assesses the “mission” of the journal Social Sciences and Missions as it approaches its twentieth anniversary, starting from its origins as a forum for interdisciplinary study of colonial-era Christian missions, especially in Africa. It surveys major debates that the journal has followed regarding gender, migration, and more. It reflects on its revised manifesto of 2021, committing to the study of missions as neither a “theological c…
Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom
Rethinking Sudan Studies: A Post-2011 Manifesto
nThis essay appraises “Sudan Studies” following the 2011 secession of South Sudan. It asks two questions. First, what has Sudan Studies been as a colonial and postcolonial field of academic inquiry and how should or must it change? Second, should we continue to write about a single arena of Sudan Studies now that Sudan has split apart? The authors advance a “manifesto” for Sudan Studies by urging scholars to map out more intellectual terrain by a…
Ibn Khaldun and the Medieval Maghrib
Colonialism, character‐building and the culture of nationalism in the Sudan, 1898–1956
(1998). Colonialism, character‐building and the culture of nationalism in the Sudan, 1898–1956. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 1-26
Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century
The unification of the Maghrib under the Almohads the spread of civilization in the Maghrib and its impact on Western civilization the disintegration of political unity in the Maghrib society in the Maghrib after the disappearance of the Almohads Mali and the second Mande expansion the decline of the empire of Mali - the 15th to 16th centuries the Songhay from the 12th to the 16th century the peoples and kingdoms of the Niger Bend and the Volta b…
Imperial Boundary Making: The Diary of Captain Kelly and the Sudan-Uganda Boundary Commission of 1913
Women, Work, and Economic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa
Politics and Islam in Contemporary Sudan
Why wasn't Islam the rallying point and battle cry of the anti-colonial movement in the Sudan? Why did the mainstream political parties and the first military regime maintain the 'secular' political structures of the colonial state? Why did the influential parties opt for an 'Islamic constitution' in the 1960s? Why did Nimeiry's regime change is course? This work attempts to answer these and related questions. Three key issues are addressed withi…
Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904)
Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State
A Century in Print: Arabic Journalism and Nationalism in Sudan, 1899–1999
In 1999, Sudan's Arabic periodical press observes its hundredth anniversary. A century before, and one year after the collapse of the Mahdist state (1881–98), the Britishdominated “Anglo-Egyptian“ regime (1898–1956) launched an official Arabic-English gazette. Four years later, Lebanese journalists founded the region's first independent Arabic newspaper, catering to an audience of Egyptians and Lebanese employed by the new government. These expat…
Middle Eastern Women and the Invisible Economy
These essays examine the struggles and hardships of women in the Middle East, their vital economic activities and their perception of Islam. They also look at the female-centred informal economy and its importance in the lives of Middle Eastern women
Ibn Khaldun and the Medieval Maghrib
Women in the Middle East and North Africa
Islam and Power in the Twentieth Century
Reviewed Works: The Arab-African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies by R. Kevin Lacey, Ralph M. Coury; Prayer Has Spoiled Everything: Possession, Power, and Identity in an Islamic Town of Niger by Adeline Masquelier; Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power, and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society by Louis Brenner At the time of publication, author Heather J. Sharkey was associated with Trinity College. Currently, she is a faculty…
The Nile: Histories, Cultures, Myths
Christians Among Muslims: The Church Missionary Society in the Northern Sudan
Church Missionary Society missionaries arrived in the northern Sudan in 1899 with the goal of converting Muslims. Restricted by the Anglo-Egyptian government and by local opposition to their evangelism, they gained only one Muslim convert during sixty years of work. The missionaries nevertheless provided medical and education services in urban centers and in the Nuba Mountains, and pioneered girls' schools. Yet few of their Sudanese graduates ach…
Becoming Walata: A History of Saharan Social Formation and Transformation
Chronicles of Progress: Northern Sudanese Women in the Era of British Imperialism
Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
Histories written in the aftermath of empire have often featured conquerors and peasant rebels but have said little about the vast staffs of locally recruited clerks, technicians, teachers, and medics who made colonialism work day-to-day. Even as these workers maintained the colonial state, they dreamed of displacing imperial power. This book examines the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898-1956) and the Republic of Sudan that followed in o…
Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America
Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
Sudan's Blood Memory: The Legacy of War, Ethnicity, and Slavery in Early South Sudan
Empire and Muslim conversion: Historical reflections on Christian missions in Egypt
This article considers Christian evangelization among Muslims in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and traces its relationship to the global and local dynamics of Western imperialism. Focusing on Egypt, where Anglo-American Protestant missionaries were active, the article examines why missionaries encountered fierce resistance from Muslim audiences despite the small number of Muslim conversions and how they inadvertently galvanized Egyp…
Missionary Legacies: Muslim-Christian Encounters in Egypt and Sudan during the Colonial and Postcolonial Periods
Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race
In what is now Sudan there occurred over the centuries a process of ta'rib, or Arabization, entailing the gradual spread of both Arab identity and the Arabic language among northern peoples. After the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of 1898, British colonial policies favoured a narrow elite from within these ‘Arab’ communities. Members of this elite went on to develop a conception of a self-consciously Sudanese Arabic national identity, in the process ad…
An Egyptian in China: "Ahmed Fahmy and the Making of "World Christianities
Ahmed Fahmy, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1861 and died in Golders Green, London, in 1933, was the most celebrated convert from Islam to Christianity in the history of the American Presbyterian mission in Egypt. American Presbyterians had started work in Egypt in 1854 and soon developed the largest Protestant mission in the country. They opened schools, hospitals, and orphanages; sponsored the development of Arabic Christian publishing a…
The British and Foreign Bible Society in Port Said and the Suez Canal
‘All things are for sale in Port Said’, said Madame. Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed (1890) At the beginning of the twentieth century, Port Said was four days from Marseilles ... four days to meet up with this Tower of Babel where Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Maltese, Cypriots, Levantines, Syrians, and Tripolitanians mixed and where they took ocean liners by storm... Valérie Nicolas, Directrice de l'Alliance Française de Port-Saïd, in Marie-L…
History (39 works) · Political science (39 works) · Ancient history (27 works) · History (25 works) · Law (24 works) · African history and culture analysis (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Archaeology (15 works)