The study of religious history has become a broader and more interdisciplinary field over the past half century, according to acclaimed historian Natalie Davis, who presented the keynote address at a conference called “The Origins of Islam: Narratives of History and the Historiography of Narratives” hosted in the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center on Monday.
The conference — organized by Dartmouth Jewish studies and religion professor Susannah Heschel and Cornell University professor David Powers — featured numerous speakers who discussed various approaches to the study of Islam. The presentations began on Sunday and concluded yesterday with Davis’s keynote address.
“The idea was to bring together scholars who work on the origins of Islam with scholars who are interested in the field of Islamic studies,” Heschel said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
The participation of these interested scholars, she said, allows for a multidisciplinary discussion that engages scholars of religion, anthropology and history, as well as those of Islamic studies.
Those who presented during “Origins of Islam” discussed two main issues: politics related to scholarly discussion of Islam, and the “theological agendas” of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Heschel said in an email to The Dartmouth.
Davis is one of the most influential historians of the 20th century, and her constantly evolving approach to the study of religion was an appropriate topic with which to conclude the conference, Heschel said.
Davis presented her address, “Rethinking Boundaries: Doing the History of Religion over Sixty Years” in the Rockefeller Center to a capacity audience of over 70 people. Her presentation focused on how the scholarship of history has developed since she entered the field over 60 years ago.
As a doctoral student, Davis’s original research focused on Christianity in France, but she has since greatly expanded her focus to include Islamic studies.
She cited three instances in her career when her approach to historical research changed.
In the 1950s, Davis attempted to “extend the study of religious change beyond theologians,” which was a revolutionary approach to the study of religious history. Her desire was to adopt a social approach to religious reform that was more inclusive of historically overlooked groups, she said.
“My quest was to see how [religious reforms] were communicated to wider audiences through wider tracts, images and sermons,” she said, adding that her research expanded to include religious reform among merchants and poorer classes.
Davis then wished to determine whether or not this broader approach had been applied to the study of Islam. Her research of Islamic expansion included women and slaves, and she said this chapter in her scholarship fundamentally changed the way she studied the history of religion. She began to examine how family, child-rearing and sexuality factored into religious history, which was initially controversial, she said.
“When I started to do this in the ‘60s, it was a new move to plug this in with religion,” she said.
This study of women in relation to religious history led Davis to conclude that there was a “double narrative” within the context of gender. While religious reform movements implicated women, the expansion of these reform movements also repressed women due to the inherent social hierarchies established by religion, Davis said.
In the following decade, Davis began to incorporate anthropological studies to her approach to religion, another evolution in her scholarship.
“Anthropology introduced me to the meaning of ritual,” she said. This emphasis on ritual was not often included in religious literature, she said.
Over the course of her career, Davis began focusing on non-European perspectives, she said.
“I wanted to go beyond well-bounded religious cultures,” she said, adding that her most recent approach to religious studies involves the idea that the boundaries between religions are “porous,” allowing increased exchange between religious cultures.
The emergence of younger scholars especially aided Davis in her studies of religious coexistence in Europe, she said.
Davis concluded that this gradual evolution has suggested “paths for research on exchange and interlinkage,” which could eventually achieve peaceful religious coexistence.
History major Emily Ulrich ’11, who attended the presentation, said she has admired Davis’s work for several years and was excited to hear her present.
“I actually read two of the articles she just mentioned on the History [Foreign Study Program],” Ulrich said. “I sort of loved her as a thinker long before I met her, and seeing her present, her enthusiasm really added so much to what was already an intellectual experience.
Other speakers at the two-day event included Denise Buell from Williams College, who discussed the origins of both Christianity and Islam on Sunday morning, and Colby College’s David Freidenreich, who gave a presentation titled “How Jewish are Muslims? Conceptions of Judaism and Islam in Medieval Canon Law.”
Heschel said the different presentations all related to a modern, “sophisticated” approach to comparative religious studies.
Heschel, whose research primarily focuses on Christian-Jewish relations in Germany, said much of her scholarship has been about Abraham Geiger, a 19th century German rabbi who wrote an influential book entitled “Judaism and Islam.” His book created the discipline of Islamic studies, Heschel said, which contributed to her personal interest in the “Origins of Islam” conference.
The conference was financed by an endowment given by the Mary and William Barnett II 1934 Family Fund to the Jewish Studies Program over 10 years ago, according to Heschel.