American Protestantism and the Kyrias School for Girls, Albania By
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Of Women, Faith, and Nation: American Protestantism and the Kyrias School For Girls, Albania by Nevila Pahumi A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in the University of Michigan 2016 Doctoral Committee: Professor Pamela Ballinger, Co-Chair Professor John V.A. Fine, Co-Chair Professor Fatma Müge Göçek Professor Mary Kelley Professor Rudi Lindner Barbara Reeves-Ellington, University of Oxford © Nevila Pahumi 2016 For my family ii Acknowledgements This project has come to life thanks to the support of people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is now the time and my great pleasure to acknowledge each of them and their efforts here. My long-time advisor John Fine set me on this path. John’s recovery, ten years ago, was instrumental in directing my plans for doctoral study. My parents, like many well-intended first generation immigrants before and after them, wanted me to become a different kind of doctor. Indeed, I made a now-broken promise to my father that I would follow in my mother’s footsteps, and study medicine. But then, I was his daughter, and like him, I followed my own dream. When made, the choice was not easy. But I will always be grateful to John for the years of unmatched guidance and support. In graduate school, I had the great fortune to study with outstanding teacher-scholars. It is my committee members whom I thank first and foremost: Pamela Ballinger, John Fine, Rudi Lindner, Müge Göcek, Mary Kelley, and Barbara Reeves-Ellington. Rudi Lindner and John Fine, in good part, made my decision to continue on at Michigan an easy one. I knew that with their approach, I would have the freedom to develop a project of my own choosing. The open enthusiasm of Müge Göcek, also an early advisor, during my classwork with her was instrumental in convincing me to turn this into a project about women. Few people speak of “turning the wheel” with the boldness of Müge, but the power has stayed with me, and for that I thank you especially, Müge. Mary Kelley’s brilliant work on women’s education in nineteenth century U.S., very quickly became the connecting bridge I needed in my own study. Quite by accident, Mary’s advice at the start of fieldwork to turn to archival sources at Mount Holyoke proved to be iii essential, just as I got ready to finish the research. Thanks to a truly serendipitous encounter at a MESA conference, I was able to contextualize the great role that Mt. Holyoke’s women missionary graduates played in extending American education in the late Ottoman Balkans. The lovely Peggy Henson very generously shared her Holyoke alumni aunt Mary Louisa Matthew’s records of missionary and broader educational work in Monastir, where the Kyrias family got their start. It was within the analytical framework and under researched gaps of gender in the Modern Balkans, that Pamela Ballinger’s input became key. Finally, my continued correspondence with Barbara Reeves Ellington during fieldwork, helped crystallize my initial ideas into their final form. In different ways, their approaches and scholarship became the bedrocks of this study. Faculty in the Modern Greek Studies Department similarly helped steer this project into its final form. Very early on, conversations with Artemis Leontis forced me to think about crafting a viable project that would still fit within my initial, if vague, framework of inquiry into the processes of identity formation along linguistic margins in the Balkans. Panayiotis Pafilis and Despina Margomenou nurtured my love of Modern Greek, and after fieldwork, Despina very patiently translated with me for a semester as we dove into the often cryptic meeting-minutes of Orthodox Church records in katharevousa, which would otherwise still remain “Greek” to me. In Albania, the list of due acknowledgements is, again, a long one. First, I thank the cohort of then doctoral students in Albanian studies here in the U.S., Elidor Mëhilli and Daniel Ramirez, for sharing their intimate knowledge of the field and resources. Daniel, in particular, further convinced me to work on women, and went out of his way, to put me in touch with initial contacts in Albania, Sonila Boçi and Ana Lalaj. Navigating the bureaucratic and many iv institutional channels to work at the Central State Archive and the National Library in Tirana would have been impossible without them. Both sacrificed their precious time to connect me to fellow scholars and archivists, without whose input, the finer details of inquiry would not have come to light. Through her conversations and groundbreaking scholarship on women from independence through the interwar period, Fatmira Musaj, inspired the second half of this project. The brilliant archivist and friend, Sokol Çunga, directed me to the equally collegial historians of Ottoman and Orthodox Görice/Korça, Andi Rëmbeci and Kostantinos Giakoumis. Their scholarship on early modern Görice, especially vis-à-vis the position of the Orthodox Church, and their pointed advice to explore the local social and religious dynamics in depth have been invaluable. Knowing Albanian, I did not have some of the difficulties that new scholars sometimes have when first getting to the archive; yet Sokol Çunga and Suela Çuçi-Iaccono made it easier for me to zero in on materials each time that I have returned to Tirana. Research in Tirana led me to other wonderful mentors, colleagues, and friends. Among them, I single out the faculty at Universiteti S & P Qiriazi, the modern day resurrection of the Kyrias School for Girls, now a business school. Robert Dako, in particular, was the living key I had to the Kyriases. Second I thank the wonderful personnel at the American Embassy, Elizabeth Lewis and Mirela Çupi, for identifying and coordinating several important research meetings, and providing many a warm respite, when they were most needed. The initial meetings with David Hosaflook, missionary pastor, and fellow scholar, have now blossomed into a constant source of insight and I hope years of future collaboration as VUSH and the Albanian Institute for Protestant Studies take off. Special thanks also go to my fellow researchers and friends Elizabeth Claffey, and Elena Shomos, who kept me grounded and focused through much of my second v research year. Finally, I thank Ina Kosturi for sharing parts of her grandmother’s diary, and the delightful chats about life in Tirana. Extended family also gave to this project, whether through setting up connections or providing me with lots of love, food, and tearful laughter. Nertila Pahumi, Jonida Nuredini, Klaudia Muraku, Prof. Edlira Haxhiymeri and family, Elona Elezi and family, provided needed camaraderie and perspective, when the going sometimes got rough. Portions of this research, which I eagerly hope to continue in the future, were conducted at the American Research Institute in Istanbul and the Başbakanlık Ottoman Archives. Indeed, I mourn the inability to return to ARIT’s heavenly abode, cozily nestled in the Albanian village on the Bosphorus shore. My brief but short research stays there were made pleasant and insightful by Joshua White and Fariba Zarinebaf, both of whom spent time to introduce me to the two facilities and led me to think about future research projects. None of the back-and-forth that this project has amounted to would have happened without the coordination, swift attention to detail, kindness, and always smiling faces of the History Department staff, especially Lorna Altstetter and Kathleen King. They have been dependable both here in Ann Arbor and during my years abroad, often reducing potential bureaucratic mishap to sweet nothings. The project has grown in large part because of the generous support of units within the University of Michigan, and outside institutions. Funding from the History Department, the Rackham Graduate School, the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, and finally the Institute for Research on Women and Gender kicked off preliminary archival research and funded return research trips to the United States, Albania, and Turkey, between 2009 and 2014. A Fulbright Research Fellowship, administered by the vi Institute for International Education, funded the heavy chunk of my thirteen months of research in Albania. Then in the fall of 2014, a Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Completion Fellowship allowed me to concentrate on writing full time. Feedback from fellow graduate students and more advanced, senior scholars both at workshops and numerous academic conferences has often forced me to structure this work, particularly when it came to thinking about making broader connections. Among these are: the Graduate Conference for European History and the European History Workshop (2010) at Michigan, the “Muslim Politics in Comparative Perspective” panel at ASEEES (2012), the Journal of Women’s History Conference “Changing Feminist Paradigms in the Eastern Mediterranean” (2013) in Istanbul, the Eastern European Studies Junior Scholars Training Seminar at the Woodrow Wilson Center (2014), the American History Workshop (2014) at Michigan, the “Activism during WWI” panel at MESA (2014), the History Dissertation Writing Seminar at Michigan (2014), and finally the Rackham Dissertation Writing Retreat (2015). I am deeply grateful to the participants for their questions and conveners for giving me the opportunity to present my work in concert with those of others who have enabled it to grow: Minayo Nasiali, Alyssa Reiman, Trevor Kilgore, Katie Rosenblatt, Edin Hajdarpasic, Robert Donia, Arzu Ozturkmen, Brian Porter-Szucs, Piotr Kosicki, and Emma Flores- Scott, Leslie Pincus, and John R. Lampe. Special thanks go to fellow students and friends who have read and critiqued portions of my work through the years: Yoni Brack, Fabio Busonero, William Burton, Elizabeth Claffey, Sherry Funches, Asli Gur, Jonathan McLaughlin, Jaymin Kim, Amanda Hendrix Komoto, Yiping Qian, Kimberly Powers, Alyssa Reiman, Elana Resnick, Elena Shomos, Marie Stango, and Josh White.