Nellie Arnott's Writings on Angola, 1905-1913: Missionary Narratives Linking Africa and America

NELLIE ARNOTT'S WRITING ON ANGOLA, 1905-1913 recovers and interprets the public texts of a teacher serving at a mission station sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Portuguese West Africa. Along with a collection of her magazine narratives, mission reports, and correspondence, NELLIE ARNOTT'S WRITING ON ANGOLA offers a critical analysis of Arnott's writing about her experiences in Africa, including interactions with local Umbundu Christians, and about her journey home to the U.S., when she spent time promoting the mission movement before marrying and settling in California. NELLIE ARNOTT'S WRITINGS ON ANGOLA sets Arnott's writing within the context of its historical moment, especially the particular situation of American Protestant women missionaries working in a Portuguese colony. This book responds to recent calls for scholarship exploring specific cases of cross-cultural exchange in colonial settings, with a recognition that no single pattern of relationships would hold in all such sites. Robbins and Pullen also position Arnott's diverse texts within the tradition of feminist scholarship drawing on multifaceted archives to recover women's under-studied publications from previous eras. Part I presents three approaches to interpreting Arnott's oeuvre: biographical (Chapter 1), historical (Chapter 2), and rhetorical (Chapter 3). Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (Part II) provide an annotated edition of Arnott's public texts, organized into three stages of authorial development, ranging from her initial journey to Africa, to her gradual professionalization as a mission teacher, to her travels home and fundraising while on furlough. ABOUT THE AUTHORS: SARAH ROBBINS is the Lorraine Sherley Professor of Literature at Texas Christian University and the author of MANAGING LITERACY, MOTHERING AMERICA (Pittsburgh Press, 2006), which won a Choice award from the American Library Association. She is also the author of THE CAMBRIDGE INTRODUCTION TO HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (Cambridge, 2007). ANN ELLIS PULLEN, is Professor of History, Emerita, at Kennesaw State University, where she chaired the Department of History and Philosophy and the Women's Studies Program. She has authored articles on the early twentieth-century interracial movement in the U.S. South in a variety of publications.